MedTech News

Many prostate cancers depend on androgen hormones, including testosterone, to grow. That is why treatments for advanced disease often try to reduce testosterone production or block its effects. Now, scientists have identified an unexpected participant in androgen chemistry: a bacterium from the human urinary tract that can convert the steroid precursor DHEA into testosterone under laboratory conditions.

CAR T-cell therapy is an immune-reprogramming procedure that turns a patient’s own immune cells into cancer-fighting specialists. The entire process is complex, but researchers have now found a faster way to achieve similar effects using a single intravenous (IV) drip of a harmless engineered virus.

Researchers from Harvard Medical School found that they can tweak a gene and turn a patient’s own pancreatic cells into insulin-producing cells.

New research from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists suggests that cyclin-dependent kinase 2 (CDK2) inhibitors, which are currently being tested as treatments that slow the growth of a narrow range of cancers, could potentially be more broadly applicable to a wide range of cancers when combined with immunotherapy.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine have uncovered a critical biological mechanism that helps explain how inflammation is triggered and sustained in a wide range of diseases—highlighting a promising avenue for future therapeutic development.