Children diagnosed with low-grade astrocytomas, the most common type of pediatric brain tumor, have more than a 90 percent chance of being cured. Yet in the process, the standard treatments (neurosurgery and chemotherapy) for this form of tumor can cause serious side effects, including damaging developing brains and bodies. Researchers at Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center recently led an in-depth exploration into…
Clustered protocadherins, a large family of paralogous proteins that play important roles in neuronal development, provide an important case study of interaction specificity in a large eukaryotic protein family. A mammalian genome has more than 50 clustered protocadherin isoforms, which have remarkable homophilic specificity for interactions between cellular surfaces. A large antiparallel dimer interface formed by the first 4 extracellular…
Most pharmaceuticals must either be ingested or injected into the body to do their work. Either way, it takes some time for them to reach their intended targets, and they also tend to spread out to other areas of the body. Now, researchers at MIT and elsewhere have developed a system to deliver medical treatments that can be released at…
A simple and robust DNA-based signal amplification method to simultaneously visualize multiple proteins in tissues has the potential to accelerate many large-scale protein mapping and biomarker discovery projects By Benjamin Boettner (BOSTON) — To better understand how tissues and organs develop, fail to function, and regenerate over time, researchers would like to visualize their constituent cells’ repertoires of molecules within…
Building upon two decades of cutting-edge research around the clinical utility of advanced sequencing, geneticists and genetic counselors at Brigham and Women’s Hospital have launched the Preventive Genomics Clinic, the first academically affiliated clinical service to provide comprehensive DNA sequencing, interpretation and reporting of disease-associated genes for healthy adults and their children who are seeking to understand and mitigate their…
For children with Ewing sarcoma, an aggressive bone cancer, a combination of two different classes of drugs may work synergistically to turn off the drivers fueling this disease, finds a new study. The combination appears to be more powerful than relying on either treatment alone. The study, published online last month in Clinical Cancer Research, is the latest in a series of investigations performed by researchers at Dana…
– RINVOQ (upadacitinib) met all primary and ranked secondary endpoints across a variety of patients with moderately to severely active rheumatoid arthritis[1-7]– Durable remission rates with RINVOQ (as assessed by DAS28-CRP<2.6) were observed at week 26[1-2] – RINVOQ significantly inhibited radiographic progression even without methotrexate[1] – Approval supported by efficacy and safety data from one of the largest registrational Phase…
Novo Nordisk to award promising start-ups free space at Boston’s premier, biotech-capable shared lab facility BOSTON, Aug. 14, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — Wanted: high-potential life sciences and biotech start-up companies looking for an opportunity to be part of a vibrant innovation ecosystem where companies develop truly transformational science. Novo Nordisk, a global healthcare company committed to discovering, creating and co-creating innovation to solve…
Bacteria, like people, have complicated relationships: they can either be friendly, neutral or antagonistic toward each other, and those relationships can change depending on the situations in which they find themselves. As interest in identifying the bacterial species present in the human microbiome that contribute to health and disease has exploded in recent years, so too have efforts to understand…
Patients with metastatic colorectal cancer who engaged in moderate exercise while undergoing chemotherapy tended to have delayed progression of their disease and fewer severe side effects from treatment, according to the results of a new study. Even low-intensity exercise, such as walking four or more hours a week, was associated with a nearly 20 percent reduction in cancer progression or…
