Ewing sarcoma is a tumour of the bones and soft tissues that occurs in children and young people. A quarter of patients do not respond well to therapy.

The group led by Ana Losada, at Spain’s National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), has discovered an alteration in the most aggressive cases that affects genes never previously related to this disease.

This finding expands the list of potential prognostic markers and therapeutic targets in the most aggressive cases of Ewing sarcoma.

The new research is published in ‘EMBO Reports’.

 

A new Reichman University study examines how conflicting interpretations regarding breast implants risk the erosion of the reputation of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The FDA frequently finds itself embroiled in public debates about the severity of side effects associated with drugs or medical devices it has approved. These debates typically generate differing viewpoints among the medical community, patients, and the general public, with some arguing that very serious side effects warrant significant regulatory intervention and others maintaining that such intervention is unnecessary.

A recent study reveals that immunosuppression, or reduced immune response, in prostate cancer is associated with a specialised epithelial subtype.

Natural killer (NK) cells are key innate immune lymphocytes, which play important roles against tumors. However, tumor-infiltrating NK cells are always hypofunctional/exhaustive. On the one hand, this state is contributed by context-dependent interactions between inhibitory NK cell checkpoint receptors and their ligands, which usually vary in different tumor types and stages during tumor development. On the other hand, the inhibitory functions of intracellular checkpoint molecules of NK cells are more similar across different tumor types, representing common mechanisms limiting the potential of NK cell therapy. In this review, representative NK cell intracellular checkpoint molecules in different aspects of NK cell biology were reviewed, and therapeutic potentials were discussed by targeting these molecules to promote antitumor NK cell therapy.

A tiny, four-fingered “hand” folded from a single piece of DNA can pick up the virus that causes COVID-19 for highly sensitive rapid detection and can even block viral particles from entering cells to infect them, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers report. Dubbed the NanoGripper, the nanorobotic hand also could be programmed to interact with other viruses or to recognize cell surface markers for targeted drug delivery, such as for cancer treatment.