Aerium Therapeutics Inc. has licensed and commenced development of three monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) with broad and potent activity against the predominant variants of SARS-CoV-2, including those containing the F456L mutation, such as EG.5.1. These antibodies could provide an option to protect immunocompromised populations from severe COVID-19.
While the liver is mostly known as the core of metabolism, contributing to the storage of nutrients and excretion of toxic substances, there is an increasing interest in how it interacts with the central nervous system through the liver-brain axis. At the 2023 European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) meeting in Vienna, Austria, group leader Kristina Schoonjans and her colleague Hadrien Demagny from the Laboratory of Metabolic Signaling at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland, gave talks setting out the context of inter-organ communication in liver disease, adding new findings from their research in the liver-brain axis.
Earlysight SA is developing a novel ophthalmology device that can be used to diagnose certain degenerative eye disorders long before onset of first symptoms. Earlysight and researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) have reported positive results for their first clinical trial of Cellularis in the journal Ophthalmology Science.
Investigators at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL; Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne) have identified a broad role for the fragile X mental retardation protein (FMRP) in suppressing antitumor immunity, they reported in the Nov. 18, 2022, issue of Science. The results could lead to new ways to boost antitumor immunity. Scientifically, they also provide new insights into the link between tumors and the nervous system.
Mutations in FMR1, the gene that codes for FMRP, cause fragile X syndrome, a neurodevelopmental syndrome that is characterized by mental retardation and autism-like symptoms.Previous work in the laboratory of Douglas Hanahan, who is the senior author of the Science paper, as well as by other teams had shown that FMRP levels were increased in several tumor types, and increased the chances that those tumors would metastasize.
Stimulating the brain via implanted electrodes is used to treat both movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, and some psychiatric conditions such as obsessive compulsive disorder. But researchers are also working on ways to make such implanted electrodes listen instead of talk – and translate neuronal signals for people that have lost the ability speak, or the ability to move.
Stimulating the brain via implanted electrodes is used to treat both movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, and some psychiatric conditions such as obsessive compulsive disorder. But researchers are also working on ways to make such implanted electrodes listen instead of talk – and translate neuronal signals for people that have lost the ability speak, or the ability to move. At the Neurophysiology: Decoding and Neural Processing II session of the 2022 Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego, researchers from the Wyss Center for Bio and Neuroengineering (Switzerland) presented a device implanted in the brain that allowed restoration of movement and speech.
Researchers have gained new insights into both genetic and nongenetic factors affecting life span, and how they differ between males and females. Several genes were correlated with longevity, according to a study by the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). However, some did not affect life span until males reached a certain age. Early access to nutrients during growth also affected longevity, as they saw in their study of more than 3,000 mice and verified with human data. “This study is one of the biggest studies on mass longevity. We were looking for genetic determinants of longevity but there are non-genetic determinants affecting longevity,” the first author Maroun Bou Sleiman, researcher at EPFL, told Bioworld.
A new study has unveiled the signaling cascade involved in the progression of brain metastasis from breast cancer. A family of connexins participates in the process that regulate the expression of laminins that favor metastatic cells to colonize the brain.
Researchers from the Swiss École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands have developed a bioprinting process that allows simultaneous production of the entire volume of complex shapes, providing much greater flexibility and faster production than layer-by-layer 3D printing. Details on the process, called volumetric printing, and printer were published in Advanced Materials.