Cancer treatments and Panama Canal efficiency: Purdue Innovates Incubator funds projects to advance university innovations
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Updates every hour. Last Updated: 27-Jul-2025 14:10 ET (27-Jul-2025 18:10 GMT/UTC)
Cells depend on the precise reading of DNA sequences to function correctly. This process, known as gene expression, determines which genetic instructions are activated. When this fails, the wrong parts of the genome can be activated, leading to cancers and neurodevelopmental disorders. Scientists at the University of Geneva (UNIGE) have identified two proteins that play a key role in regulating this essential mechanism, paving the way for promising new treatments that could be more effective and less toxic than those currently available. Their findings are published in Nature Communications.
The recently published study offers new insights into KRAS, a gene that’s known to be involved in almost half of all cancers. It could be a step toward developing “ultrapersonalized” treatments for colon cancer, with therapies that precisely target not just the specific genes involved in a patient’s cancer but individual mutations of that gene.
Adding the oncolytic virus immunotherapy pelareorep to paclitaxel chemotherapy warrants further investigation in patients with HR+ HER2- metastatic breast cancer whose disease has progressed after standard first-line treatment, according to PrECOG, LLC, the cancer research group that investigated the combination in the BRACELET-1 (PrECOG 0113) randomized phase 2 trial.
Ovarian cancer (OC) remains the deadliest gynecologic malignancy, with platinum-based chemotherapies such as carboplatin serving as the standard first-line treatment. However, the emergence of carboplatin resistance presents a major therapeutic challenge, and the underlying mechanisms remain incompletely understood. In this study, Dr. Tao Lu’s group from Indiana University School of Medicine, employed a novel validation-based insertional mutagenesis (VBIM) technique to identify genes that confer resistance to carboplatin in human epithelial OC cells. This screen revealed hematological and neurological expressed 1-like (HN1L/JPT2) as a previously unrecognized contributor to drug resistance. HN1L overexpression enhanced resistance to carboplatin, whereas shRNA-mediated knockdown sensitized OC cells to treatment. Mechanistically, HN1L promoted resistance by activating nuclear factor κB (NF-κB) signaling. In addition, HN1L depletion reduced anchorage-independent growth in vitro and impaired tumorigenicity in a xenograft model of OC. Immunohistochemical (IHC) analysis demonstrated elevated HN1L expression in both OC cell lines and patient tissues across multiple disease stages. These findings identify HN1L as a novel carboplatin resistance gene and suggest that targeting HN1L may represent a promising strategy for overcoming platinum resistance in OC.
Organ transplant recipients with advanced cancer, an often overlooked group in cancer care, may benefit from immunotherapy drugs, according to a new study.
The major international study, published in the prestigious JAMA Oncology journal, has revealed promising signs that cancer-fighting immunotherapy drugs, long considered too risky for organ transplant patients, may offer real benefits when carefully managed.
In this April 2025 issue of Annals of Thoracic Surgery (JCR Q1, IF: 3.6), a retrospective study, led by Professors Jianxing He and Shuben Li from the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, illustrated the safety, feasibility, and efficacy of extended sleeve lobectomy (ESL) after neoadjuvant immunochemotherapy in patients with centrally located non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
The article entitled "Extended Sleeve Lobectomy After Neoadjuvant Immunochemotherapy for Centrally Located Non-small Cell Lung Cancer". It is the first study to evaluate the impact of neoadjuvant immunochemotherapy on ESL. The results demonstrated that ESL after neoadjuvant immunochemotherapy is a viable and safe option for selected patients with centrally located NSCLC to avoid pneumonectomy(PN), especially when standard sleeve lobectomy (SSL) is insufficient for R0 resection.