For glioblastoma, immunotherapy faces a particular challenge—the blood-brain barrier blocks T cells from entering the brain to prevent brain inflammation that can be life-threatening. This “protective measure” is beneficial under normal conditions, but it prevents T cells from reaching the glioblastoma, leaving immunotherapy useless. On September 5th, Nature published an article entitled “A homing system targets therapeutic T cells to brain cancer”, which reveals a new solution from a…
PCGF5 Is Required for Neural Differentiation of Embryonic Stem Cells
Researcher Yao Hongjie from the Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences published a research report entitled “PCGF5 is required for neural differentiation of embryonic stem cells” on Nature Communications. This work reveals the molecular mechanism by which polycomb PCGF5 regulates the differentiation of embryonic stem cells into neural precursor cells. Epigenetic modification plays an important role in maintaining stem cell characteristics and cell fate transformation….
New Mechanism by Which Cancer Cells Inhibit Anti-tumor Immune Responses Revealed
Cancer cells are not just a group of cells that are out of control; for their own survival, they actively participate in the struggle with the immune system. Being able to evade detection by the immune system is a feature of cancer. In a new study, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania found that cancer cells release biological “unmanned aerial vehicles” – small vesicles called exosomes that circulate in the…
Review of the Control of Inflammasome Activation by Phosphorylation
Recently, Zhou Rongbin and Jiang Wei, professors of the Department of Life and Medical Sciences of the University of Science and Technology of China, the Key Laboratory of Natural Immunology and Chronic Diseases of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the National Research Center of Hefei Microscale Material Science, were invited to present in the Trends in Biochemical Sciences of Cell. A review article entitled Control of Inflammasome Activation by…
Alzheimer’s Disease and Insulin—Is There Any Connection?
Johnson & Johnson recently announced that the company has stopped a clinical trial of a new Alzheimer’s disease drug due to certain safety issues. This is another failed clinical trial following the announcement of several large clinical trials that have no effect in treating Alzheimer’s disease. More and more failure cases tell us that we need to stop and think about how we could find the cause of Alzheimer’s disease….
Nat Med: Key Factors Determining the Anticancer Effect of Immunological Checkpoint Therapy
Stimulatory dendritic cells (SDCs) play a key role in stimulating cytotoxic T lymphocytes and promoting immune responses against cancer. Studying the mechanisms that regulate the abundance of SDCs in the tumor microenvironment (TME) will provide new therapeutic strategies. Rencently, researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, studied the abundance in human melanoma and the influencing factors of SDC, and found it was associated with intratumoral expression of…
Immunity: Why Can’t HIV Be Cured? Scientists Find the Key Mechanism!
Due to the rapid development of antiretroviral therapy (ART), HIV patients can live longer than before. But even if it is a very effective long-term ART, the HIV virus remains stubbornly incurable, so patients need medication for life. Scientists have been convinced that this is because the HIV virus has created a stubborn virus-infected cell nest that allows HIV to survive indefinitely. A recent study done by researchers at Brigham…
PNAS: A Key Switch in Biological Clocks Found
Multipoint phosphorylation of the PERIOD 2 (PER2) protein is a critical step in determining the mammalian clock cycle. Previous studies have suggested that the phosphorylation of PER2 by casein kinase 1 (CK1) requires the initiation of an undiscovered protein kinase. CK1 is an essential circulatory protein that is highly conserved from algae to humans. These phosphorylation processes stabilize the PER2 and delay its degradation to extend the circadian clock cycle….
Two Articles Revealed a Specific Gene That Makes the Human Brain Big—NOTCH2NL
Over the past 3 million years, the evolution of larger brains has played an important role in our ability to think, solve problems, and develop cultures. However, it has always been a mystery for us to become genetic changes in the human brain. In two papers published in Cell, two groups of researchers identified a gene family, NOTCH2NL, which appears to play an important role in the human-specific cortical development…
Ways to Promote Durable Weight Loss in Obese Patients Found
Recently, in a study published in Nature Medicine, researchers from Charite Medical College in Berlin successfully treated obese patients due to hereditary defects. The new drugs developed by the researchers not only benefit patients, but also help them understand the basic signal pathways that regulate the satiety of this new drug. Gene mutations that encode leptin receptors induce individuals to become extremely hungry during the first few months of…