Engineers in the USC Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering have now developed an update to the tool that will allow CRISPR technology to be even more powerful with the help of focused ultrasound. The resulting toolkit will allow CRISPR gene editing to be precisely targeted to the specific areas requiring treatment. The research team is already applying this discovery to refine their work in cancer immunotherapy. The researchers are ".... are pushing it one step further to make it controllable. Instead of continuously editing the genome, we can now control it to be activated at a specific location and at a specific time using a non-invasive remote-controlled ultrasound wave. That’s the breakthrough.”

Treatment for more advanced and difficult-to-treat head and neck cancers can be improved with the addition of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), the same ingredient used in children’s glue. Researchers found that combining PVA with a boron-containing compound, D-BPA, improved the effects of a type of radiation therapy for cancer, compared to currently clinically used drugs. The PVA made the drug more selective of tumor cells and prolonged drug retention, helping to spare healthy cells from unnecessary radiation damage. 

The 66th Annual Meeting & Exposition of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) will take place in San Diego, Calif. and online Dec. 7-10. See below for oral presentations by Fred Hutch experts.

A study from the University of Michigan Health Rogel Cancer Center may have, at last, cracked the cold case of immunotherapy resistance.

The Wistar Institute’s David B. Weiner, Ph.D., and his laboratory created a new therapeutic design for glioblastoma, the deadliest form of brain cancer. The lab engineered molecules called trispecifics that connect cancer-killing T cells with not just one but two different brain cancer receptors.