Shimon Sakaguchi is honored for his revolutionary discovery of regulatory T cells—revealing how “immune tolerance” impacts autoimmune diseases, cancer and more.

The Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology has launched the ASPIRE trial—a large-scale, Phase III clinical study investigating whether adding chemotherapy to current standard treatments can extend survival for men living with advanced prostate cancer.

The genetic risk of disease, not remission status, determines overall survival of patients with high-risk acute myeloid leukemia (AML) after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT). Furthermore, there is no benefit of remission induction with standard salvage chemotherapy prior to allo-HSCT. These are the results of a recently published long-term follow-up [1] of the ASAP trial [2], which was conducted at renowned universities and clinics across Germany. “Our groundbreaking results once again demonstrate the importance of early stem cell transplantation and challenge international therapy standards,” says Prof. Dr. Johannes Schetelig, Head of the Stem Cell Transplantation Unit at the University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus Dresden and Director Clinical Research at DKMS who acted as the coordinating investigator of this clinical trial, which was financed and organized by DKMS. The international non-profit organization, dedicated to fighting blood cancer and recruiting stem cell donors worldwide, is committed to advancing research and development to improve therapies in the context of hematological diseases.

When the nerves connected to taste buds are cut, the buds usually wither and later regrow. But Korean researchers found that not all taste cells fade equally. Sweet-sensing cells, supported by the protein c-Kit, are uniquely resilient. Using mouse and organoid experiments, the team showed that blocking c-Kit with the cancer drug imatinib eliminated these survivors, preventing regeneration. The discovery reveals how specific cell types drive taste recovery.