[Direct Relief] Direct Relief and The Pfizer Foundation announced the third cohort of the Innovation Awards in Community Health, supporting infectious disease prevention and management in underserved communities.

[Karolinska Institutet] Federico Iovino has been awarded a five-year consolidator grant from Karolinska Institutet for his research on bacterial infections that affect the brain. The funding will enable long-term planning in studies of conditions such as meningitis and encephalitis.

[Nature] Researchers showed that Cas12a2, a recently discovered type V CRISPR nuclease, exhibits RNA-triggered DNA shredding15,16, and enables programmable and sequence-specific elimination of yeast and human cells expressing a target transcript.

[Cancer Immunology Research] Scientists performed single-cell RNA and T cell receptor sequencing of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) isolated from patient tumors and their paired ex vivo expanded cell products. They found large transcriptional differences between pre- and post-expansion TILs.

[Cancer Immunology Research] Investigators showed that CAR T cells downregulated the chemokine receptor CCR7, crucial for nodal homing, during manufacturing. To improve nodal CAR T-cell trafficking, they engineered anti-CXCR5 CAR T cells, targeting mature lymphoma, with stable CCR7 expression.

[Cancer Immunology Research] Scientists engineered CAR T cells to express constitutively active mutants of STAT3 and STAT5 to investigate their individual functions. Co-expression of constitutive active mutants (ca) of STAT3 and caSTAT5 markedly enhance the long-term proliferative capacity of CAR T cells, even in the absence of antigen stimulation or cytokine supplementation.

[Cancer Discovery] Researchers generated CAR-T cells against one antigen - U5 snRNP200, an RNA helicase localized to the acute myeloid leukemia (AML) cell surface and absent from normal hematopoietic precursors. Anti-U5 snRNP200 CAR-T cells were effective in human and syngeneic models of AML as well as B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

[Stem Cell Reviews and Reports] The authors summarize current evidence supporting both direct and indirect interactions between itaconate signaling and MSC biology.

[Scientific Reports] MSCs profoundly affected tumor development. MSC-deficient tumours exhibite necrosis and infiltration of immature myeloid-derived suppressor cells, whereas MSC-rich tumors show enhanced vascularisation, adaptive immune infiltration, and stromal remodelling.

[Nature Reviews Urology] Results from randomized Phase II trials support the use of metastasis-directed therapy in patients with metachronous oligometastatic prostate cancer. In parallel, prostate-directed treatments such as radiotherapy and cytoreductive radical prostatectomy are under investigation.

[Oncogene] Scientists showed that DEAD-box helicase 3 X-linked (DDX3X) colocalizes with androgen receptor (AR) mRNA in androgen receptor-low/negative CRPC cells and selectively recognizes non-canonical RNA G-quadruplex motifs within the sequence of AR mRNA.

[Molecular Cancer Research] Scientists identified the metabolic enzyme oxoglutarate dehydrogenase-like (OGDHL) as an unexpected regulator of tumor growth, treatment-induced lineage plasticity, and DNA damage in prostate cancer.