Newsletters

[UNC School of Medicine] Dr. Jessica Thaxton at the UNC School of Medicine has been awarded a prestigious $700,000 grant from the Mathers Foundation to support research into the role of the endoplasmic reticulum in T cell metabolism and cancer development.

[Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy] Growing research demonstrates that immune checkpoint pathways, particularly the PD-1/PD-L1 axis, play dual roles in immune regulation and metabolic modulation by orchestrating inflammatory responses and energy metabolism.

[Nature Reviews Immunology] Scientists describe the effects of IL-33 in various diseases, including viral infections, cancer, graft-versus-host disease, colitis, autoimmunity, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma and allergy.

[Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences of The United States of America] Genetic ablation or pharmacological inhibition of NAT10 restricted the survival and self-renewal of LSCs in primary t(8;21) acute myeloid leukemia (AML) CD34+ cells, as well as in a retroviral AML1-ETO9a-driven t(8;21) AML mouse model.

[Annual Review of Genetics] The authors examine early-diverging metazoans to reevaluate the evolutionary logic of stemness. Rather than viewing stem cells as exceptional, we argue that cellular plasticity represents a deeply conserved attribute of early life.

[Oncogene] Researchers investigated a critical molecular mechanism driving advanced bladder cancer (BLCA) progression. In vitro and in vivo analyses indicate that POC1A knockdown inhibits BLCA cell proliferation, metastasis, and stemness.

[Neuro-Oncology] Researchers demonstrated the anti-proliferative effect of Abexinostat (Abx) on both differentiated cells and glioma stem cells (GSC). Abx reduced both DNA repair machinery and GSC markers by decreasing chromatin accessibility.

[Cell Death & Disease] Integrating 3D cancer spheroid models with RNA-seq analysis, the authors investigated NRF2 hyperactivation in CSCs and its role as a core mediator of CSC-associated radioresistance and stemness via the canonical WNT/β-catenin pathway.

[Oncogenesis] Investigators revealed that stanniocalcin 1 (STC1) is a key regulator of GSC phenotypic plasticity and aggressiveness through the NOTCH1/STAT3/GFPT2/O-GlcNAcylation pathway.

[Oncogenesis] Scientists identified NKCC1 as a marker of normal intestinal stem cells, supported by its crypt-base localization, single-cell transcriptomics, and patient-derived organoids, while analyses of public colorectal cancer single-cell datasets further link NKCC1 expression to cancer stem cell populations.

[Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy] Researchers developed a dual-reporter system combining NANOG-EGFP and H2B-mCherry pulse-chase labeling to separately identify quiescent or extremely slow-cycling breast cancer stem-like cells and active BCSCs in vitro and in vivo.

[Cellular & Molecular Immunology] Substantial crosstalk exists between NLRP3 and other inflammasomes and programmed cell death pathways. The authors summarize recent advances in our understanding of the molecular mechanisms that mediate these interactions, focusing on shared signaling components, organelle dynamics, and posttranslational modifications.