“From such a stick, such a splinter,” is a popular Spanish saying to explain how a son resembles his father. Like father, like son. The first Spotlight on Immuno-Oncology conference of the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy (ASGCT) is the splinter of the ASGCT annual meeting, which brought together a group of experts in this field. It took place on Aug. 1 and 2, 2023, starting with a series of talks on “B Cell Malignancies and Beyond.”

A receptor could hold the key to explaining how stress affects behavior, at least under certain circumstances. Scientists from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) have described how childhood neglect or abuse altered the brain. Stress glucocorticoid hormones caused neuronal damage in mice by increasing the receptor tyrosine kinase MERTK in astrocytes and inducing them to phagocytose excitatory synapses.

When a group of British scientists studied which proteins might be in the wrong place of the cell in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients, they found hundreds of them mislocalized. Other studies had shown that TDP-43 protein was mislocalized. But it was not known that the phenomenon was widespread, and affected mRNA as well as proteins. “Our study revealed that these mislocalized proteins were heavily involved in RNA binding functions and exhibited high binding affinities to RNAs,” Rickie Patani told BioWorld.

The overexpression of the MYC oncogene could be explained through a new pathway that would act before transcription, when MYC binds to DNA. A group of scientists from Spain have identified how the ERK2 kinase interacted with the CDK9 protein, enabling it to bind to DNA in the promoter region of MYC.

Avoidance of graft-vs.-host disease (GVHD) after a hematopoietic stem cell transplant could depend on certain members of the microbiome. According to a study led by scientists at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center (FHCC), while some species of intestinal bacteria repressed the expression of the major histocompatibility complex II (MHC-II), others induced it and triggered the immune response that produces GVHD.

The Hubmap consortium has released the atlas of three human organs, a cell-by-cell map based on overlaid images from microscopy and molecular data. Maps of the intestine, the kidney and the placenta, published in three simultaneous articles, have revealed the cellular morphology and architecture of these organs in healthy and diseased conditions.

Using whole genome sequencing, scientists at Boston Children’s Hospital have studied the genes and mutations of ataxia-telangiectasia (A-T) that would respond to treatments with splice-switching antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs). Their work, published on July 12, 2023, in Nature, determined the appropriate individualized genetic therapy for these patients and identified a new drug.

After CAR T-cell immunotherapy for leukemia, some children have a longer remission because the engineered cells remain active and control or prevent the growth of new tumor cells. A new collaborative study has found that these persistent cells expressed certain genes that could be identified through a transcriptional signature. The finding could explain why the treatment does not work in some patients, and potentially help to improve it, reducing relapses.