Immune cells are capable of detecting infections just like a sniffer dog, using special sensors known as Toll-like receptors, or TLRs for short. But what signals activate TLRs, and what is the relationship between the scale and nature of this activation and the substance being detected? In a recent study, researchers from the University of Bonn and the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) used an innovative method to answer these questions. The approach that they took might help to speed up the search for drugs to combat infectious diseases, cancer, diabetes or dementia. Their findings have been published in the journal “Nature Communications.”

Metabolic enzymes have second jobs in the nucleus, where they support cell division and DNA repair. It is the first time researchers have shown that metabolic enzymes play a leading role in protecting the integrity of the human genome. The discovery led to new strategies which caused triple negative breast cancer cells to self-destruct, a new line of attack for one of the leading causes of cancer mortality. The findings were made by scientists at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) and published today across two separate research papers in the journal Nature Communications. The studies pave the way for new metabolism-based cancer therapies.

Glioblastoma is the most common kind of malignant brain tumor in adults. So far, no treatment has been able to make this aggressive tumor permanently disappear. The tumor cells are too varied, and the microenvironment is too tumor-friendly. Researchers at the University of Basel and University Hospital Basel have now developed an immunotherapy that not only attacks the tumor—it also turns its microenvironment against it.

- TIL-Tregs specifically increase GLUT3 expression for glucose uptake in tumors.

- GLUT3 fuels protein O-GlcNAcylation, boosting TIL-Tregs' immune suppression.

- Blocking GLUT3 disrupts Treg activation and limits tumor growth.

Scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital have uncovered a previously unrecognized tumor suppression mechanism through the study of condensates and ribosome formation.