More than 40 million Americans take statins, the most common type of prescription drug. While statins have been shown to effectively lower cholesterol levels and reduce the risks of stroke and heart attack, they do not work the same for everyone, and side effects of statin use include an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Researchers from Institute for…
Competition is steep to receive a research grant from the Pediatric Orthopedic Society of North America (POSNA), including the once-a-year awarded Quality, Safety, and Value Initiative (QSVI) Grant. This grant encourages the creation and implementation of quality and patient safety programming, and applicants must go through a rigorous multiple-tiered review process for the reward. Seattle Children’s is thrilled that this…
The authors compared human tumor tissues to non-malignant, inflamed tissues and observed extensive phenotypic and functional overlap in regards to the immune infiltrate, but also identified a human tumor-unique regulatory T cell population. They report that this intratumoral Treg population is highly suppressive and can be distinguished from all other hematopoietic cells (in blood and tumor!) by expression of just 2 surface proteins (IL-1R1 and ICOS). Overall, they provide both a highly sought after, human tumor-specific therapeutic target as well as novel insight for disentangling tumor-mediated immune changes from general inflammation-mediated immune changes.
Sound Pharmaceuticals, Inc. announced that it has received a $1.1M supplement to its $3.1M National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) Award, bringing the total NIH funding to $4.2M. SPI is developing ebselen (SPI-1005), a new molecular entity with anti-viral and anti-inflammatory activity, and enrolling in two Phase 2 clinical trials for the treatment of hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Ebselen has…
Bill Gates helped cut the ribbon Monday afternoon at a new Seattle-area manufacturing facility for vaccines built by Inventprise, a biotech company supported with funds from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Tucked in the fields and wineries of Seattle suburb Woodinville, Wash., the new 70,000-square foot facility will produce vaccines against pneumococcal disease, which kills hundreds of thousands of children…
Every organism is born with a few mutations in their genome that differ genetically from both of their parents. Such changes in an individual’s genetic code create the diversity that allows nature to select advantageous traits that drive the evolution of a species. The type of mutations and the rate at which they appear vary between individuals and species. Some researchers suspect…
Although somatic mutations in colorectal cancer are well characterized, little is known about the accumulation of cancer mutations in the normal colon before cancer. Here, we have developed and applied an ultrasensitive, single-molecule mutational test based on CRISPR-DS technology, which enables mutation detection at extremely low frequency (<0.001) in normal colon from patients with and without colorectal cancer. This testing…
The authors showed that TGF-β signaling in smooth muscle cells during embryogenesis and early postnatal life is essential for normal aortic development. This observation left open the possibility that antagonism of TGF-β signaling in adult life might not be harmful. To address this question, they used a genetic approach to ablate TGF-β signaling in smooth muscle cells of adult (11-month-old) mice. Ablation of smooth muscle cell TGF-β signaling caused structural and functional abnormalities of the proximal aorta.
A study published in Nature Genetics brings scientists closer to unraveling the genetic mechanisms underpinning autoimmune disease risk. The work “Prioritization of autoimmune disease-associated genetic variants that perturb regulatory element activity in T cells” pinpoints many regions of the genome that vary between individuals (termed genetic variants) that could potentially cause autoimmune disease. Most of these regions lay outside of…
Faraday Pharmaceuticals Inc., today announced the enrollment of the first patient in its Iocyte AMI-3 study — a Phase 3 clinical trial assessing the efficacy and safety of FDY-5301 in reducing cardiovascular (CV) death and heart failure in anterior ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) patients undergoing primary percutaneous intervention (PCI). The trial is being conducted under a Special Protocol Agreement reached with the…
