In fighting chronic infections or certain cancers, CD8+ T cells—the immune system’s frontline soldiers—eventually become exhausted. They lose effectiveness and respond less efficiently to threats. This weakening is a major therapeutic challenge, as it limits the body’s ability to fight chronic infections.

 

However, the team of Professor Simona Stäger at Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS), in collaboration with colleagues from INRS and McGill University, has identified a key game changer: IRF-5. This transcription factor appears to preserve the energy and vitality of CD8+ T cells by acting directly on their metabolism.

 

These findings, recently published in The EMBO Journal, highlight the importance of fundamental research in understanding the immune system and developing innovative therapeutic approaches.

Salk Institute Professor Diana Hargreaves was named a 2025 All-Star Translational Award Program grantee by the V Foundation for Cancer Research. The award comes as a recognition of Hargreaves’ exceptional success with her previous V Foundation grant in 2016. For the All-Star project, she will receive $1 million and work with collaborator Gregory Botta, an associate professor at UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center, to improve immunotherapy—a treatment that utilizes the body’s own immune cells to fight cancer—in patients with pancreatic cancer.

A seven-year international, multi-centre clinical trial led by London Health Sciences Centre Research Institute (LHSCRI) and St. Michael’s Hospital, a site of Unity Health Toronto, has found that a new ventilation mode called proportional assist ventilation (PAV+™) could improve outcomes for patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) who require help breathing. The study is published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The Louisiana Obesity Society (LOS) and the Louisiana Chapter of the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (LA-ASMBS) announce the return of the Louisiana Obesity Conference Aug. 8 and 9, in New Orleans. The third annual, two-day conference will be held at the Loews New Orleans Hotel and will feature opportunities for networking, continuing education courses, vendor showcases and much more. Keynote speakers will include Donna Ryan, MD, professor emerita at Pennington Biomedical Research Center, and Erik Wilson, MD, medical director of bariatric surgery at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center.

Answer ALS is proud to announce the launch of a groundbreaking collaborative initiative aimed at accelerating AI-powered drug discovery for ALS and other neurodegenerative diseases. This effort, known as the Louisiana AI Drug Development Infrastructure for ALS (LADDIA), brings together leading institutions and innovators, including Tulane University, Pennington Biomedical Research Center, and GATC Health - a tech-bio innovator using validated AI models to accelerate drug discovery from large-scale multiomics data-, to harness the power of artificial intelligence and one of the largest ALS datasets in the world.