Abstract
A collection of recently published news items.
Researchers developed a “homing system” that may help T cells penetrate brain tumors (Nature 2018;561:331–7). The team reengineered CD6 proteins to cause T cells to anchor to the activated leukocyte cell adhesion molecule and to become more sensitive to the intercellular adhesion molecule. These changes resulted in T cells being removed from circulation and entering glioblastoma and medulloblastoma tumors.
The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, MA, won a key CRISPR patent battle. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, DC, upheld a decision by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that the Broad's 2014 patents on CRISPR/Cas9 for editing plant and animal genomes do not overlap with pending CRISPR patent applications filed by the University of California, Berkeley.
A recent study concluded that 21% of 4,000 single-nucleotide variants in BRCA1 are likely to be oncogenic (Nature 2018;562:217–22). Researchers developed a CRISPR-based technique called saturation genome editing to make thousands of modifications to the gene and measured the effect of each on human cells.
Results of almost half of all European clinical trials weren't reported within 1 year of completion, as required by the European Commission (BMJ 2018;362:k3218). Researchers found that only 11% of completed trials funded by noncommercial sponsors, such as universities, hospitals, governments, and charities, and 68% funded by commercial sponsors, such as drug companies, complied with the regulations.
Artificial intelligence may be able to diagnose patients with lung cancer (Nat Med 2018;24:1559–67). Researchers developed a machine-learning program by training a deep neural network with slide images of cancerous tissues from The Cancer Genome Atlas. Their program distinguished adenocarcinomas from squamous cell carcinomas with 97% accuracy and determined the presence of STK11, EGFR, FAT1, and other mutations with 73% to 86% accuracy.
For more news on cancer research, visit Cancer Discovery online at http://cancerdiscovery.aacrjournals.org/CDNews.
