Researchers from the Chinese Institute for Brain Research, the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, and their collaborators have identified adenosine as the driving force behind the rapid, fast-acting antidepressant effects of ketamine and electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). “Our journey into this area of research began over a decade ago, around 2013, when the clinical world was buzzing with excitement about ketamine's remarkably rapid antidepressant effects,” Minmin Luo, co-senior author of the study, told BioWorld.
Blocking progesterone receptor (PR) activity has long been viewed as a possible approach to breast cancer prevention. Historically, most supporting evidence came from animal models, epidemiological studies or mechanistic pathway analyses. Now, a team at the University of Manchester has uncovered direct mechanistic and clinical evidence that PR antagonists can reprogram the breast tissue microenvironment, suggesting a novel avenue for reducing breast cancer risk in women.
At the AACR-NCI-ORTC conference, researchers from Dewpoint Therapeutics Inc. presented advances in targeting MYC condensates, revealing a potential breakthrough strategy for treating cancers driven by MYC – a well-established oncogenic driver that is frequently overexpressed or amplified across a range of human cancers.
Leading advances in cancer research, the 2025 AACR-NCI-EORTC International Conference on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics highlighted some of the field’s most promising innovations. Parabilis Medicines Inc. and Tango Therapeutics Inc. presented their work on potential therapeutic targets that may signal significant shifts in the future of cancer treatment.
During the first poster session of the 2025 AACR-NCI-EORTC International Conference on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics, held in Boston, several presentations highlighted novel strategies that move beyond traditional antibody-drug conjugate payloads and targets.
At this year’s AACR-NCI-EORTC conference, several presentations brought to light new ways to tackle the treatment of genomically unstable cancers. Genomically unstable cancers can be treated by exploiting their repair dependencies, inducing catastrophic DNA damage, or harnessing immune responses to instability.
During the first poster session of the 2025 AACR-NCI-EORTC International Conference on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics, held in Boston, several presentations highlighted novel strategies that move beyond traditional antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) payloads and targets.
Researchers at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) and collaborators have introduced a novel therapeutic strategy for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) that leverages the multivalency of supramolecular nanomedicines to reprogram blood-brain barrier (BBB) function, facilitating efficient amyloid-β (Aβ) clearance and restoring cognitive function in animal models.
Genetic mutations are the primary cause of most rare diseases. Although each condition affects a small fraction of the population, the global impact is significant, with an estimated 300 million individuals affected worldwide. A large proportion of pathogenic missense variants – estimated at 40%-60% – cause rare diseases by impairing protein stability. This underscores protein restoration as a promising therapeutic strategy.
Two back-to-back papers published in Nature on Sept. 10, 2025, shed new light on the unexpected role of neurons in shaping the evolution of small-cell lung cancer (SCLC). It’s already known that, in gliomas, cerebral cancer cells actively damage axons, contributing to tumor progression through direct neural disruption.
