Newsletters

[Asahi Kasei] Asahi Kasei announced the initiation of a Phase I clinical trial for AK1940, a novel peptide-based investigational compound developed to address significant unmet medical needs in patients with autoimmune diseases.

[Genentech] Genentech announced that the US FDA has accepted the company’s supplemental Biologics License Application for Gazyva® for the treatment of systemic lupus erythematosus.

[Nature Communications] In this multicenter, double-blind, Phase IIb trial, 152 patients with active systemic lupus erythematosus were randomized to receive subcutaneous interleukin 2 or placebo every other day for 12 weeks, then weekly for another 12 weeks. Low-dose-IL2 drove the expansion of Tregs and altered Treg/effector T cell ratios.

[Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy] Investigators identified the tetraspanin CD81 as a regulator of leukemia stem cells function, progression and treatment resistance in acute myeloid leukemia.

[Nature Communications] Researchers showed that chronic sleep fragmentation (CSF) markedly impairs immune responses to influenza vaccination. In a mouse model, two weeks of CSF before and during influenza vaccination compromises antibody responses and reduces protection against lethal challenge.

[Nature Communications] Microbiota-derived metabolites can modulate both the innate and adaptive immune system, as well as directly target tumour cells, thereby regulating anti-tumour immunity and response to immunotherapy. The authors describe the current mechanistic knowledge on how these metabolites exert their effects.

[UMass Chan] Dr. Louis Messina, the Johnnie Ray Cox Term Chair in Biomedical Research and professor of surgery, received a $3 million R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health to investigate why aging slows wound healing, particularly in older adults, and develop ways to restore more youthful healing responses.

[Nature Reviews Immunology] Scientists frame cancer cells as ‘infectious self’, having both pathogen-like and self-like features. In turn, monocytes and macrophages adopt modular programmes across primary and metastatic tumor sites, as well as along hematogenous, lymphatic, and transcoelomic routes of dissemination, that are shaped by oncogenic lesions.

[Blood] Researchers retrospectively profiled peripheral blood collected prior to glucocorticoid treatment from allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation recipients without acute graft-versus-host disease (aGvHD), with steroid-sensitive aGvHD, and with steroid-refractory-aGvHD using an integrated multi-omics approach.

[Microsystems & Nanoengineering] Investigators developed a wireless unidirectional electric field device, in where the electrochemical field is manipulated to examine migratory responses of human peripheral blood neutrophils and high metastatic potential MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells.

[Science Advances] Researchers provided a direct comparison of neoantigen-specific T cell responses between vaccinated patients with cancer and HLA-matched healthy donors. They expanded neoantigen-specific T cells from allogeneic donors, revealing that their T cell receptors can recognize targets that the patient’s own T cells fail to engage with.

[Immunity] The authors discuss the layers of memory-like features in innate lymphocytes, highlighting emerging questions of natural killer/Innate lymphoid cell differentiation and reprogramming, as well as their residency, interactions, and functions in tissues.