News & Commentaries

San Diego, CA, USA – For some cancers, initial treatment with chemotherapy brings positive, but only temporary, results: tumors shrink, but then rebound as the cancer becomes drug-resistant. This pattern of remission-resistance-relapse is particularly true for pancreatic cancer, an aggressive disease in which early success is often countered by eventual disease progression.

Newcastle-up-Tyne, UK – New research led by scientists at Newcastle University, UK reveals a potential revolutionary way to treat eye injuries and prevent blindness - by softening the tissue hosting the stem cells which then helps repair wounds, inside the body. The team discovered that the simple application of a tissue-softening enzyme, collagenase, prevents the loss of corneal stem cells following an injury and could prevent patients from losing their sight. It offers hope to almost 500,000 people a year who lose their sight due to chemical burns including acid attacks.

Bethesda, MA, USA – A new study led by scientists in the Center for Cancer Research (CCR) at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) sheds light on one way tumors may continue to grow despite the presence of cancer-killing immune cells. The findings, published in Science, suggest a way to enhance the effectiveness of immunotherapies for cancer treatment. NCI is part of the National Institutes of Health.

Boston, MA, USA – Researchers at Dana-Farber/Boston Children's Cancer and Blood Disorders Center and the University of Massachusetts Medical School have developed a strategy to treat two of the most common inherited blood diseases – sickle cell disease and beta thalassemia – applying CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing to patients' own blood stem cells. Described this week in Nature Medicine and in a January report in the journal Blood, their approach overcomes prior technical challenges, editing blood stem cells more efficiently than in the past.