Poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) hydrogel undergoes significant but precise changes in size between 20 and 40 °C, making it an excellent candidate for use in variable-size deterministic lateral displacement (DLD) array devices. Researchers from Science Tokyo have built a tunable DLD cell-sorting platform and verified its ability to sort cancer cells of defined sizes from blood samples. This platform could offer high-resolution size-based cell sorting for a wide variety of biomedical applications

The SECURED project aims at generating libraries and machine learning tools to foster innovation in the fight against blood cancers while preserving the highest privacy standards for sensitive patient data. Dr Eduard Porta, head of the Cancer Immunogenomics team at the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute is part of this Horizon Europe-funded collaboration that will bring the most sophisticated technologies into the real world.

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is one of the hardest breast cancers to treat because it grows quickly, spreads early and often becomes resistant to therapy. In a new preclinical study, researchers at MUSC Hollings Cancer Center developed a humanized antibody that targets SFRP2 — a protein that helps TNBC tumors survive, grow and suppress the immune system.

The antibody tackled TNBC on multiple fronts. It slowed tumor growth, reduced lung metastases, reactivated exhausted immune cells and shifted macrophages into a tumor-fighting state. Importantly, it killed cancer cells that had become resistant to chemotherapy and concentrated in tumor tissue without harming healthy organs.

These findings suggest that blocking SFRP2 could form the basis of a new precision therapy that strengthens the immune response while avoiding the toxicities of current treatments. The antibody has been licensed to Innova Therapeutics, which is advancing efforts toward future clinical trials.