An experimental new app is designed to diagnose obstructive sleep apnea(Credit:monkeybusiness/Depositphotos) When doctors are trying to determine if someone has obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), they often get that person to sleep overnight in a lab while wired up to a variety of sensors. Known as polysomnography (PSG), this process records the patient’s brain waves,...
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Vaccine Shows Promising Results for Early-Stage Breast Cancer Patients
TAMPA, Fla. – Immunotherapy is a fast growing area of cancer research. It involves developing therapies that use a patient’s own immune system to fight and kill cancer. Moffitt Cancer Center is working on a new vaccine that would help early-stage breast cancer patients who have HER2 positive disease. The HER2 protein is overexpressed in nearly 25 percent...
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Immunotherapy, gene therapy combination shows promise against glioblastoma
“Devastating” and “dismal.” That’s how leading researchers describe the present outlook for malignant brain tumors. The median survival rate for patients with glioblastoma multiforme, or GBM, is a mere 14.2 months. New research out of the University of Michigan supports combining two approaches to fight back against gliomas: attacking the tumor with gene therapy while...
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FDA To Speed Up Review Of Roche Tecentriq As Immunotherapy Treatment For Bladder Cancer
Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche has announced that U.S. health regulators have agreed to grant priority review to its Tecentriq immunotherapy treatment for a type of bladder cancer. In a statement, the drug company said that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has accepted its Biologics License Application, or BLA, and agreed to priority-review the treatment. Tecentriq Tecentriq (atezolizumab)...
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Cancers Evade Immunotherapy By ‘Discarding the Evidence’ of Tumor-Specific Mutations
Discovery could explain widespread acquired resistance among patients treated with immune checkpoint blockade drugs. T-cells attacking a cancer cell. Results of an initial study of tumors from patients with lung cancer or head and neck cancer suggest that the widespread acquired resistance to immunotherapy drugs known as checkpoint inhibitors may be due to the elimination...
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Autoimmunity and infections: When the body fights itself
Basel-based doctors are on the trail of a possible connection between autoimmune diseases and infections: errors can occur when immune cells absorb certain proteins from pathogen cells. These findings were reported in the journal PNAS by researchers from the Department of Biomedicine at the University of Basel and University Hospital Basel, as well as colleagues in the...
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New findings about stem cells in the brain of patients with epilepsy
Neural stem cells have been found in epileptic brain tissue — outside the regions of the brain where they normally reside. In a group of patients who underwent surgery for epilepsy, over half had stem cells where healthy individuals do not have them, according to a study from Sahlgrenska Academy. “We have confirmed what earlier...
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CtIP-Specific Roles during Cell Reprogramming Have Long-Term Consequences in the Survival and Fitness of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells
Highlights DNA end resection mechanism is hyper-activated during reprogramming CtIP protein levels increase during mouse and human cell reprogramming Loss of CtIP impairs mouse and human reprogramming efficiency Reprogramming without CtIP causes defects in iPSC self-renewal and differentiation Summary Acquired genomic instability is one of the major concerns for the clinical use of induced pluripotent...
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Lipid metabolism is potential ‘Achilles’ heel’ for cancer stem cells
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Researchers have discovered a metabolic signature critical for the functioning of “cancer stem cells” that initiate tumor formation. The team also showed how to interfere with this metabolic mechanism in ovarian cancer, inhibiting tumor growth. “The cancer stem cells are resistant to conventional therapies and are responsible for tumor relapse after...
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Stem cells used to regenerate the external layer of a human heart
Summary: A process using human stem cells can generate the cells that cover the external surface of a human heart — epicardium cells — according to a multidisciplinary team of researchers. Heart progenitors cells derived from human stem cells can be further specified to heart cells belong to external layer or muscle layer of a...