To date, no cardiovascular model has been able to shed light on how and why cardiac congenital disorders start in the human embryo. Researchers from the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) in Vienna have been able to recapitulate cardiogenesis in multi-chamber cardioids, sort of interacting heart chambers intended to dissect how genetic and environmental factors impact human heart development.

At the IDWeek 2023 infectious disease conference, Rachelle Koch, a medical student from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, presented the work done in David Greenberg’s Lab on a new strategy to tackle Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections using D-peptide-conjugated phosphorodiamidate morpholino oligomers (D-PPMOs). P. aeruginosa is an opportunistic pathogen showing a multidrug-resistance (MDR) pattern that is at the root of significant morbidity and mortality, especially in immunocompromised patients with severe chronic lung diseases such as cystic fibrosis.

During the IDWeek conference held in Boston earlier this month, presentations on Climate Change were spread throughout the program. Some talks were on the direct effects of weather on infectious agents. Others discussed what healthcare workers could do to mitigate the effects of climate change, from antibiotic stewardship to decarbonization of day to day operations.

Increasing knowledge of the cancer glycome and the need for new options to overcome resistance to immune checkpoint inhibitors are leading to an expansion of glycoimmunology. Stanford University professor Carolyn Bertozzi demonstrated that cell-surface glycans may be tagged to become targetable glyco-immune checkpoints.

At the IDWeek 2023 infectious disease conference held last week in Boston, fungal infections got the audience’s attention during the session titled, “The antifungal evolution: novel strategies for a changing world.” With the emergence of some resistant pathogens such Candida auris and the growing disease burden in the population at risk for life-threatening fungal infections, these pathogens are more than ever standing out within the infectious diseases arena.

In a study published in Nature on Oct. 11, coinciding with the beginning of IDWeek 2023 in Boston, researchers from Harvard Medical School described EVEscape, a method for anticipating the movements of SARS‑CoV‑2 by predicting potential mutations likely to escape current vaccines and treatments.

In recent years, the introduction of immune checkpoint inhibitors to the oncolytic pipeline has been a significant breakthrough in cancer treatment, but unfortunately some tumors respond only minimally. Besides CTLA-4, and since the approval of PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors, only the anti-LAG3 strategy (relatlimab, Bristol Myers Squibb Co.) has been good enough to reach the market. In a session dealing with emerging checkpoints beyond PD-1, CTLA-4 and LAG3, Drew Rasco from the START Center for Cancer Care depicted a new player on the ground of immunotherapeutic options.

In a study published in Nature on Oct. 11, coinciding with the beginning of IDWeek 2023 in Boston, researchers from Harvard Medical School described EVEscape, a method for anticipating the movements of SARS‑CoV‑2 by predicting potential mutations likely to escape current vaccines and treatments.

Cancer treatments for targeting tumor amplifications lag behind those targeting point mutations – and part of the reason may be that amplifications often reside on extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA). Since ecDNA was first described back in 1965 as minute chromatin bodies in brain cancer cells, the use of large-scale DNA sequencing techniques has revealed the presence of ecDNA across a wide range of cancer types. “The circular structure of ecDNA is associated with increased proto-oncogenic capacity in comparison to linear amplifications. Another key feature is that ecDNA does not contain centromeres,” Roel Verhaak, from Yale School of Medicine, told the audience in a session at the 2023 AACR-NCI-EORTC Conference on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics in Boston.

In a study published in Nature on Oct. 11, coinciding with the beginning of IDWeek 2023 in Boston, researchers from Harvard Medical School described EVEscape, a method for anticipating the movements of SARS‑CoV‑2 by predicting potential mutations likely to escape current vaccines and treatments.