Thiago Carvalho @cyrilpedia@social.cleverlibre.org

There are some drawbacks, with monoclonals being more vulnerable to the emergence of escape variants than vaccines, but this is a sensible proposal (the other major drawback is price, but that is a regulatory and not scientific issue).

"As a dual-purpose platform technology, monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) can close the gap in prophylaxis that exists with a vaccine-only approach and serve as a therapeutic option where needed. Thus, the development of an arsenal of ready-to-use prophylactic and therapeutic mAbs could help to rapidly contain future infectious disease outbreaks before they evolve into pandemics."

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.add3055

'In this issue of Nature Medicine, Cascone et al.2share the latest results of their phase 2 platform trial, NEOSTAR, which suggest that the addition of CTLA-4 blockade to neoadjuvant anti-PD-1 plus chemotherapy may augment anti-tumor responses.'

#LungCancer #Immunology #TumorImmunology #immunotherapy #checkpointinhibitors

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02246-2

The jump to MHC alleles without described ligands is a promising sign that MixMHC2pred-2.0 could be a powerful tool for both basic and clinical research. Very curious to see if other groups validate and adopt it.

"Within humans, our work revealed that MHC-II binding motifs and MHC-II ligands could be accurately predicted even for alleles without known ligands. This is an important improvement of MixMHC2pred-2.0 compared with MixMHC2pred-1.2 and NeonMHC2, which were not applicable to most patients and could not be included in our benchmarks."
#Immunology

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1074761323001292?dgcid=coauthor#sec4

TRIM21 is a fascinating molecule - it's basically an intracellular Fc receptor. Here, Mukadam et al show that it plays a role in antibody mediated prevention of tau protein aggregate formation in neurone.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abn1366

"Here, we show that glycolysis drives STING signaling to facilitate DC-mediated antitumor immune responses. Tumor-infiltrating DCs exhibited elevated glycolysis, and blockade of glycolysis by DC-specific Ldha/Ldhb double deletion resulted in defective antitumor immunity."
#Immunology #TumorImmunology #Immunotherapy #Metabolism
#InnateImmunity

https://www.jci.org/articles/view/166031

'I came away from Athens struck by the sheer quantity of theatre available – this week alone there are 284 shows on offer – as well as by the quality of the acting and the capacity of the National Theatre to surmount the recent crisis. But as Moschos reminded me there is still much work to be done: the National urgently needs more money, more new writing and, not least, more female directors.'

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2023/apr/06/50-day-squat-athens-hotbed-european-theatre-nazis-kushner

"South Korean biotech companies are working to diversify from China in anticipation that the US could tighten export restrictions on the sector to bolster its domestic industry and curb Chinese growth."

https://www.ft.com/content/49870c62-4be2-453b-a93d-fe8cb59bdd35

'But increasingly the American mortality anomaly, which is still growing, is explained not by the middle-aged or elderly but by the deaths of children and teenagers. One in 25 American 5-year-olds now won’t live to see 40, a death rate about four times as high as in other wealthy nations.'

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/06/opinion/deaths-life-expectancy-guns-children.html

" Treatment of nasal cultures with type 2 cytokine IL-13 to mimic asthmatic airways differentially impacts HCoV receptor availability as well as replication. MERS-CoV receptor DPP4 expression increases with IL-13 treatment, whereas ACE2, the receptor used by SARS-CoV-2 and HCoV-NL63, is down-regulated. IL-13 treatment enhances MERS-CoV and HCoV-229E replication but reduces that of SARS-CoV-2 and HCoV-NL63, reflecting the impact of IL-13 on HCoV receptor availability."

#immunology #MucosalImmunology #Coronavirus

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2218083120

'We reveal that tonic IFN-I expression characterizes osteoclast precursors prior to receptor activator of NF-kappaB ligand (RANKL) exposure and that many tonic ISGs are repressed by RANKL signaling. In addition, the ISG response to RANKL is complex and multifaceted.'

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2210409120

'But the rise of microtargeting has come with a staggering price tag. “There is limited evidence to suggest that the efficiency and efficacy gains to advertisers and publishers of this system outweighs the societal impact,” concludes a 274-page study published by the European Commission this year. It calls for reforming the surveillance business model.'

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/06/opinion/online-advertising-privacy-data-surveillance-consumer-quality.html

'“Success would be … if not exponential, at least some logarithmic progression towards more and more gene therapies being approved,” he said. The agency has approved 12 gene therapies to date, according to Marks, five of which came in 2022.
To get there, Marks and CBER have a four-poin plant: improve manufacturing through new research, clarify the use of the accelerated approval pathway for gene therapies, coordinate regulatory decisions with other regulators and launch an Operation Warp Speed for rare diseases. Easy, right?'

#drugdiscovery #GeneTherapy #pharma

https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/thats-failure-fdas-marks-says-gene-therapy-approvals-must-rapidly-increase