The Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) project, a multiyear, multi-institutional attempt to catalog how expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) and splicing quantitative trait loci (sQTL) affect protein levels, reported data from its final phase in 15 papers in the Sept, 10, 2020, online issues of the Science and Cell family of journals, as well as in Genome Biology.

According to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), drug-induced liver injury (DILI) is the leading cause of acute liver failure in the U.S. It is also a leading cause of drug failure in clinical trials. Now, researchers have used liver organoids to develop a polygenic risk score that could predict the risk of liver toxicity for multiple different drugs, regardless of the underlying mechanism.

BioWorld looks at translational medicine, including: MTOR-targeting metabolite discovered; AKG for A-OK aging; Benzodiazepine and barbiturate binding to GABA-A; Giving misfolded proteins a second chance; Agrin-culture grows cartilage; SCAD vs. plaques in heart attacks.

Researchers at City of Hope have used a combination of oncolytic virus and CD19-targeting CAR T cells to first force expression of CD19 on tumor cells and then hunt down those cells, eradicating tumors in immunocompetent mouse models and endowing them with immunity to later re-administration of tumor cells.

BioWorld looks at translational medicine: Researchers at Emory University have gained new insights into how exercise confers stress resilience.

With COVID-19, questions about how infections cause lasting immunity, or don’t, and how you know and what it all means for vaccines have become a matter of public focus. But some immunologists have been pondering those questions for years. “The immune system has a very good memory,” Bali Pulendran told BioWorld. “Clearly, some viruses and some pathogens can enter the body and stimulate the immune system, and the immune system can remember that encounter for decades.”