Research News

Mount Sinai researchers have made two important discoveries about the mechanism by which bladder cancer cells foil attacks from the immune system. The research, published in Cancer Cell in September, could lead to a new therapeutic option for patients with these types of tumors.

Zika virus has a trick up its sleeve. Once inside the body, the virus likes to make a bee line for dendritic cells, the cells we rely on to launch an effective immune response.

“Dendritic cells are major cells of the innate immune system,” says LJI Professor Sujan Shresta, Ph.D., a member of the LJI Center for Infectious Disease and Vaccine Research. “How is this virus so clever that it’s able to establish infection in cells that would normally fight infections?”

University of Pittsburgh researchers describe for the first time a pathway by which cells repair damaged lysosomes, structures that contribute to longevity by recycling cellular trash. The findings are an important step towards understanding and treating age-related diseases driven by leaky lysosomes.

Targeting FGFR has recently emerged as a promising strategy in the treatment of cholangiocarcinoma (CCA), a very aggressive rare malignancy. At ESMO Congress 2022, two new agents were added to the list of FGFR inhibitors being investigated, showing some clinical benefits or potential in patients not previously treated with this anticancer drug class.

Two early studies investigate the anticancer activity of derazantinib and RLY-4008 in patients with FGFR inhibitor-naive cholangiocarcinoma.

ICMR-National Institute of Malaria Research scientists from India published an opinion in Lancet Regional Health Southeast Asia that India requires Artificial Intelligence (AI) based approaches into the current microscopy method for detection of Malaria.

Infections in pregnant women have been linked to an increased risk of neurodevelopmental conditions, such as autism, in the child later in life. But it does not seem to be the infections themselves that cause autism, researchers from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden show in a study published in The Lancet Psychiatry.

Neutralizing antibody levels against the original COVID-19 virus and omicron variants in vaccinated adults tend to decline by at least 15% per month after a single booster shot, a new study using serum from human blood samples suggests. 

Data from two adults in the same study who had a dramatic loss in antibodies but received a second booster showed that the second dose completely restored antibodies to protective levels.

When high blood pressure was induced in young mice, they had bone loss and osteoporosis-related bone damage comparable to older mice, according to new research presented today at the American Heart Association’s Hypertension Scientific Sessions 2022 conference, held Sept. 7-10, 2022, in San Diego. The meeting is the premier scientific exchange focused on recent advances in basic and clinical research on high blood pressure and its relationship to cardiac and kidney disease, stroke, obesity and genetics.

Over the past few decades, very few new antibiotics have been developed, largely because current methods for screening potential drugs are prohibitively expensive and time-consuming. One promising new strategy is to use computational models, which offer a potentially faster and cheaper way to identify new drugs.