The Japanese biochemist found in the 1970s that cholesterol-lowering drugs lowered the LDL, or “bad” cholesterol, level in the blood.Akira Endo, a Japanese biochemist whose research on fungi helped to lay the groundwork for widely prescribed drugs that lower a type of cholesterol that contributes to heart disease, died on June 5. He was 90.Chiba Kazuhiro, the president of Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, where Dr. Endo was a professor emeritus, confirmed the death in a statement. The statement did not give a cause or say where he died.Cholesterol, mostly made in the liver, has important functions in the body. It is also a major contributor to coronary artery disease, a leading cause of death in the United States, Japan and many other countries.In the early 1970s, Dr. Endo grew fungi in an effort to find a natural substance that could block a crucial enzyme that is part of the production of cholesterol. Some scientists worried that doing so might threaten cholesterol’s positive functions.But by 1980, Dr. Endo’s team had found that a cholesterol-lowering drug, or statin, lowered the LDL, or “bad” cholesterol level, in the blood. And by 1987, after other researchers in the field had published additional research on statins, Merck was manufacturing the first licensed statin.Such drugs have proven effective in reducing the risk for cardiovascular disease, and millions of people in the United States and beyond now take them for high levels of LDL.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

A large study by researchers at Stanford Medicine has found that the risk of secondary blood cancers after CAR-T cell therapy — a cell-based cancer treatment that exploded on the scene in 2017 as a treatment for intractable blood cancers — is low, despite a Food and Drug Administration warning.
In November 2023, the FDA issued a warning about a risk of secondary cancers — particularly blood cancers — that may be associated with CAR-T cell therapy. The warning was preceded by a rising tide of concern following reports of patients diagnosed with T cell cancers unrelated to the cancer for which they had been treated.
However, the study of over 700 patients treated at Stanford Health Care indicated that the risk is low — around 6.5% in the three years after therapy. In the only case of fatal secondary T-cell cancer, researchers found it was likely due to the immunosuppression caused by CAR-T cell therapy, rather than the CAR-T cells. The compromised immune system allowed pre-existing, but not previously detected, cancer cells to grow explosively in the patient.
“We wanted to understand this one rare case, so we analyzed all the patients treated with CAR-T cell therapy at Stanford with wide breadth and studied this single case extraordinary depth,” said professor of medicine Ash Alizadeh, MD, PhD. “We compared protein levels, RNA sequences and DNA from single cells across multiple tissues and time points to determine that the therapy didn’t introduce the lymphoma into this patient; instead it was already brewing in their body at very low levels.”
The study’s conclusions may alleviate some concerns sparked by the FDA’s “black box”warning — a prominent box on medication labels that warns of risky side effects. More importantly, however, it may help researchers and clinicians identify prospective CAR-T cell therapy recipients who are at increased risk of secondary cancers. Although these patients are unlikely to forgo potentially lifesaving treatment to avoid a small risk of future cancer, they could be monitored more closely after receiving the therapy or screened thoroughly for other cancers before initiating CAR-T cell treatment.
Alizadeh, who is the Moghadam Family Professor and the leader of the Cancer Genomics Program at the Stanford Cancer Institute, and David Miklos, MD, PhD, professor of medicine and chief of bone marrow transplantation and cellular therapy, are the senior authors of the study, which will be published on June 13 in The New England Journal of Medicine. Postdoctoral scholars Mark Hamilton, MD, PhD; Takeshi Sugio, MD, PhD; and Troy Noordenbos, MD, PhD are the lead authors of the research.
The problem with cancer treatments
The idea of a cancer treatment causing other cancers is not new. The chemotherapy and radiation treatments that are standard for many types of cancers can cause genetic mutations in previously healthy cells that cause them to ignore the biological guardrails meant to keep cell division in check.

In CAR-T cell therapy, immune cells called T cells are isolated from a patient and genetically engineered to more efficiently seek out and kill cancer cells. To do so, researchers introduce a custom-made gene into the T cells’ DNA. This gene encodes instructions for a protein called a chimeric antigen receptor that recognizes and binds to cancer cells; when the protein is made by the T cells and affixed to their surfaces, they become efficient cancer-killing machines.
When researchers were designing the therapy, they used genetic engineering strategies to ensure that the inserted gene would generally not disrupt normal cellular functions. But if the gene for the new protein is mis-inserted in the genome it could inactivate or modify genes involved in key cellular pathways such as those that control cell growth. If this happens, the T cells that are meant to be curative may instead become cancerous.
After the FDA announced in November it was investigating the risk of secondary cancers, Miklos and his colleagues realized Stanford Medicine’s large biobank of tissue and blood samples from people receiving CAR-T cell therapy could hold vital answers, both about the relative risk and whether these cancers arose from the manipulated T cells. They partnered with researchers in Alizadeh’s laboratory to conduct an in-depth look at the DNA sequences, the RNA messages (which give a glimpse into the proteins a cell is making) and the proteins in the samples.
The researchers analyzed the outcomes for 724 people treated with CAR-T cell therapy at Stanford Health Care between 2016 and 2024. Among those people, the incidence of secondary blood cancers approached 6.5% over a median of three years of follow-up, which is roughly similar to patients who underwent stem cell transplantation rather than CAR-T cell therapy to treat their cancers. Only one person rapidly developed and died from a T cell cancer called a T cell lymphoma shortly after CAR-T cell therapy.
The researchers used molecular, cellular and genetic analyses — including several novel genetic profiling techniques developed in Alizadeh’s laboratory — to compare all 724 patients’ tumors, their CAR-T cells and their healthy cells at multiple time points before and after CAR-T cell treatment.
“This was a tour de force effort from the study’s first authors, working feverishly as a team from just before Thanksgiving through Christmas,” Alizadeh said.

The analysis found no evidence that the T cells responsible for the patient’s second cancer were the T cells engineered for the CAR-T cell therapy — they were molecularly and genetically distinct. However, both sets of T cells were infected with a virus known to play a role in cancer development. Furthermore, the patient had a history of autoimmune disease in the years prior to their first cancer diagnosis.
The study’s findings suggest that secondary cancers arising after CAR-T cell therapy may be due to baseline immunosuppression or the side effects of the treatment, rather than the mis-insertion of the gene for the chimeric antigen receptor during the genetic engineering of the T cells.
“These results may help researchers focus on the immune suppression that can precede and often follows CAR-T cell therapy,” Miklos said. “Understanding how it contributes to cancer risk is particularly important as the CAR-T cell field pivots from treating high-risk, refractory blood cancers to lower risk, but clinically important, disorders including autoimmune diseases.”
“This study could serve as a blueprint for how to capture and characterize the outcomes of CAR-T therapies so we can develop a very clear understanding of their risks and benefits,” Alizadeh said. “These are lifesaving therapies that come with a very low risk of secondary cancers. The challenge lies in how to predict which patients are at higher risk, and why.”
The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health (grants R01CA233975, NCI P01 CA049605), the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, the Lymph&Co Foundation, the Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Fund for Cancer Research, Kite-Gilead, and Adaptive Biotechnologies.

People who give birth to infants less than 5.5 pounds may be more likely to have memory and thinking problems later in life than people who give birth to infants who do not have a low birth weight, according to a study published in the June 12, 2024, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The effect on memory and thinking skills was equivalent to one to two years of aging for those with low-birth-weight deliveries.
The study does not prove that delivery of a low-birth-weight infant causes memory and thinking problems. It only shows an association.
“Previous research has shown that people who have had a low-birth-weight delivery have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease and high blood pressure,” said study author Diana C. Soria-Contreras, PhD, of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts. “Our study found that a history of having a child with a low birth weight may also be a marker of poorer cognition later in life.”
The study involved 15,323 female participants with an average age of 62 at completion of thinking and memory tests. All the participants had at least one birth. Of the total participants, 1,224 people, or 8%, had a history of low-birth-weight delivery. Low birth weight was defined as less than 5.5 pounds for pregnancies lasting more than 20 weeks.
Participants completed a questionnaire about their pregnancy complications, birth outcomes, birth weight and other information.
They also completed a series of thinking and memory tests.
Researchers then combined average scores of the two tests of participants’ memory and ability to quickly and accurately respond to a situation as well as the two tests of learning and working memory. Higher scores indicated better memory and thinking. On average, the difference in scores between those with and without a low-birth-weight delivery was -0.06 for speed and attention tests and -0.05 for learning and working memory. This is comparable to the difference associated with one to two additional years of age in this population.

The results were similar after researchers adjusted for factors that could affect both birth weight and cognitive function, such as age, smoking status and high blood pressure. The results were also similar when researchers did not include people with premature deliveries, pregnancies with twins or other multiples or those affected by pregnancy-related high blood pressure disorders.
In addition, they found that the more low-birth-weight deliveries people had, the lower their scores were.
“Future research is needed to confirm our findings and to look at whether screening women with a history of low-birth-weight deliveries for cognitive issues and taking steps to promote their brain health could help prevent or delay cognitive impairment and dementia later on,” Soria-Contreras said.
A limitation of the study is that most of the participants were non-Hispanic white people, so results may not be generalizable to other populations.
The study was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the National Institute on Aging and the Office of Research on Women’s Health.

People who experience prolonged depressive symptoms starting in young adulthood may have worse thinking and memory skills in middle age, according to a study published in the June 12, 2024, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study also found that depressive symptoms were experienced more often by Black adults than white adults.
“The processes that lead to dementia begin long before signs of the disease become apparent, and previous research has shown that Black adults have a higher risk of dementia than white adults,” said study author Leslie Grasset, PhD, of University of Bordeaux in France. “Our study found that prolonged exposure to elevated depressive symptoms in young adulthood has a negative effect on thinking and memory in middle age, especially for Black adults.”
The study involved 3,117 people with an average age of 30 at the start of the study. Of participants, 47% were Black and 53% were white.
Participants were evaluated for depressive symptoms every five years for 20 years. At each visit, they completed a questionnaire asking if they experienced changes in appetite or sleep, had problems with concentration or experienced feelings of worthlessness, sadness or loneliness. Higher scores represented more symptoms.
Researchers divided participants into four groups based on the progression of their symptoms over time: persistently low symptoms, medium decreasing, persistently medium or high increasing symptoms. There was a higher proportion of Black participants, 52%, in the persistently medium group, as well as the high increasing depressive symptoms group with 70%.
Five years later, when participants had an average age of 55, they were given three tests to examine thinking and memory skills.
For example, on a test that measures processing speed and memory, participants were given a key showing numbers and corresponding symbols. They then had to draw those symbols on a separate list of random numbers as quickly as possible. The score range was zero to 133 with lower scores representing worse cognition. Those in the low symptom group had an average score of 73, in the medium decreasing group, an average score of 71, persistently medium, a score of 66 and high increasing, an average score of 57.

After adjusting for factors such as age, physical activity and total cholesterol, among Black participants, those in the high symptom group had an average score that was 0.64 standard deviations below the average score for the low symptom group. Among white participants, those in the high symptom group had an average score that was 0.40 standard deviations below the average score for the low symptom group.
Researchers created a standardized score for each of the three cognitive tests. After adjusting for factors such as education, blood pressure and total cholesterol, researchers found among Black participants, those in the three groups with high and medium symptoms had worse verbal memory, processing speed and executive function scores when compared to those in the low group.
Researchers found among white participants, those in the high symptom group had worse verbal memory and processing speed scores when compared to those in the low symptom group.
“Our results suggest that Black adults are not only more likely to experience worse depressive symptoms trajectories, but these symptoms may lead to worse repercussions on thinking and memory as early as middle age,” said Grasset. “This may help explain some of the disparities in dementia risk at older age.”
Grasset said, “Having more depressive symptoms may be due to inequalities in socioeconomic resources such as housing and income, as well as access to health care and treatment. Racial inequalities should be accounted for when designing interventions to reduce a person’s risk of dementia.”
A limitation of the study was that symptoms were self-reported and no clinical diagnosis of depression was available. It is possible that some participants may not have accurately reported their symptoms.

Brain scans of more than 2,000 preadolescents suggests that early life exposure to heat and cold may have lasting effects on the microstructure of white matter in the brain, especially when living in poorer neighbourhoods. The study, published in Nature Climate Change, highlights the vulnerability of foetuses and children to extreme temperatures. This research has been led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre supported by the “la Caixa” Foundation, and IDIBELL, in collaboration with the Erasmus University Medical Center Rotterdam (ERASMUS MC) and the Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red (CIBER): areas of Epidemiology Public Health (CIBERESP), and Mental Health (CIBERSAM).
In the current climate emergency, the impact of extreme temperatures on human health is a major concern for the scientific community and society. Children are particularly vulnerable to temperature changes, as their thermoregulation mechanisms are still immature.
“We know that the developing brain of foetuses and children is particularly susceptible to environmental exposures, and there is some preliminary evidence suggesting that exposure to cold and heat may affect mental well-being and cognitive performance in children and adolescents,” says Mònica Guxens, researcher at ISGlobal, Erasmus MC and CIBERESP. “However, there is a lack of studies evaluating potential changes in brain structure as a result of these exposures,” she adds.
In this study, a team led by Guxens looked at the white matter structure in the brains of preadolescents to identify windows of susceptibility to cold and heat exposure in early life. The analysis included 2,681 children from the Generation R Study, a birth cohort in Rotterdam, who underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) between 9 and 12 years of age. The MRI protocol assessed brain connectivity by measuring the magnitude and direction of water diffusion within the brain’s white matter. In more mature brains, water flows more in one direction than in all directions, which gives lower values for a marker called mean diffusivity and higher values for another marker called fractional anisotropy. The research team used an advanced statistical approach to estimate, for each participant, exposure to monthly mean temperatures from conception until 8 years of age, and their effect on these MRI connectivity parameters (mean diffusivity and fractional anisotropy) measured at 9-12 years.
Susceptibility window between pregnancy and age three
The results show that exposure to cold during pregnancy and the first year of life, and exposure to heat from birth until 3 years of age were associated with higher mean diffusivity at preadolescence, pointing to slower white matter maturation. ‘Cold’ and ‘heat’, in this case, are defined as those temperatures that are at the lower and upper end, respectively, of the temperature distribution in the study region.
“The fibres of the white matter are responsible for connecting the different areas of the brain, enabling communication between them. As the white matter develops, this communication becomes faster and more efficient. Our study is like a photograph at a particular moment in time and what we see in that image is that participants more exposed to cold and heat show differences in a parameter — the mean diffusivity — which is related to a lower level of maturation of the white matter,” explains Laura Granés, IDIBELL and ISGlobal researcher and first author of the study. “In previous studies, the alteration of this parameter has been associated with poorer cognitive function and certain mental health problems,” she adds.

“The largest changes in connectivity parameters are observed in the first years of life,” says co-author and IDIBELL, UB and CIBERSAM researcher Carles Soriano. “Our results suggest that it is during this period of rapid brain development that exposure to cold and heat can have lasting effects on the microstructure of white matter.”
No association was found between temperature exposure in early life and fractional anisotropy at 9-12 years. The authors argue that a possible explanation is that these two metrics reflect different microstructural changes, and that mean diffusivity may be a more robust indicator of white matter maturation, compared to fractional anisotropy.
Poorer children more at risk
A stratified analysis by socioeconomic conditions showed that children living in poorer neighbourhoods were more vulnerable to cold and heat exposure. In these children, the windows of susceptibility to cold and heat were similar than those identified in the overall cohort, but started earlier. These differences may be related to housing conditions and energy poverty.
One important mechanism that could explain the effect of ambient temperature on neurodevelopment could be related to poorer sleep quality. Other possible mechanisms include disruption of placental functions, activation of the hormonal axis leading to higher cortisol production, or inflammatory processes.
“Our findings help to raise awareness of the vulnerability of foetuses and children to changing temperatures,” says Guxens. The findings also stress the need of designing public health strategies to protect the most vulnerable communities in the face of the looming climate emergency.

Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed microscopic robots, known as microrobots, capable of swimming through the lungs to deliver cancer-fighting medication directly to metastatic tumors. This approach has shown promise in mice, where it inhibited the growth and spread of tumors that had metastasized to the lungs, thereby boosting survival rates compared to control treatments.
The findings are detailed in a paper published on June 12 in Science Advances.
The microrobots are an ingenious combination of biology and nanotechnology. They are a joint effort between the labs of Joseph Wang and Liangfang Zhang, both professors in the Aiiso Yufeng Li Family Department of Chemical and Nano Engineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.
To create the microrobots, researchers chemically attached drug-filled nanoparticles to the surface of green algae cells. The algae, which provide the microrobots with their movement, enable the nanoparticles to efficiently swim around in the lungs and deliver their therapeutic payload to tumors.
The nanoparticles are made of tiny biodegradable polymer spheres, which are loaded with the chemotherapeutic drug doxorubicin and coated with red blood cell membranes. This coating serves a critical function: it protects the nanoparticles from the immune system, allowing them to stay in the lungs long enough to exert their anti-tumor effects. “It acts as a camouflage,” said study co-first author Zhengxing Li, who is a nanoengineering Ph.D. student in both Wang and Zhang’s research groups. “This coating makes the nanoparticle look like a red blood cell from the body, so it will not trigger an immune response.”
This formulation of nanoparticle-carrying algae is safe, the researchers noted. The materials used to make the nanoparticles are biocompatible while the green algae employed, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, are recognized as safe for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
This study builds on prior work by Wang and Zhang’s teams using similar microrobots to treat deadly pneumonia in mice. “Those were the first microrobots to be safely tested in the lungs of live animals,” said Wang.

In previous work, the microrobots fought the spread of pneumonia-causing bacteria using a different drug and cell membrane combination for the nanoparticles. By tweaking these components, the team has now tailored the microrobots to fight the spread of cancer cells in the lungs. “We demonstrate that this is a platform technology that can actively and efficiently deliver therapeutics throughout the entire lung tissue to combat different types of deadly diseases in the lungs,” said Zhang.
In the current study, mice with melanoma that had metastasized to the lungs were treated with the microrobots, which were administered to the lungs through a small tube inserted into the windpipe. Treated mice experienced a median survival time of 37 days, an improvement over the 27-day median survival time observed in untreated mice, as well as mice that received either the drug alone or drug-filled nanoparticles without algae.
“The active swimming motion of the microrobots significantly improved distribution of the drug to the deep lung tissue, while prolonging retention time,” said Li. “This enhanced distribution and prolonged retention time allowed us to reduce the required drug dosage, potentially reducing side effects while maintaining high survival efficacy.”
Moving forward, the team is working on advancing this microrobot treatment to trials in larger animals, with the ultimate goal of human clinical trials.
Paper: “Biohybrid microrobots locally and actively deliver drug-loaded nanoparticles to inhibit the progression of lung metastasis.” Co-authors of the study include Fangyu Zhang*, Zhongyuan Guo*, Zhengxing Li*, Hao Luan, Yiyan Yu, Audrey T. Zhu, Shichao Ding, Weiwei Gao and Ronnie H. Fang.
*These authors contributed equally to this work.
This work was supported by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency Joint Science and Technology Office for Chemical and Biological Defense (HDTRA1-21-1-0010) and the National Institutes of Health (R21AI175904).

In response to stressful or dangerous stimuli, nerve cells in the spinal cord activate involuntary, autonomic reflexes often referred to as “fight or flight” responses.
These protective responses cause changes in blood pressure and the release of stress hormones into the blood stream. Normally, these responses are short-lived and well-controlled, but this changes after a traumatic spinal cord injury.
A first-ever study published in the journal Science Translational Medicine identifies a druggable cellular target that, if controlled properly, could prevent or lessen autonomic dysfunction and improve quality of life for people with spinal cord injury.
“We discovered that exaggerated, life-threatening autonomic reflexes after spinal cord injury are associated with abnormal growth and rewiring of nerve fibers in the spinal cord. A specific cell type, called microglia, control this abnormal growth and rewiring,” said corresponding author Phillip Popovich, PhD, professor and chair of the department of neuroscience at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and College of Medicine.
“Using experimental tools to deplete microglia, we found it’s possible to prevent abnormal nerve growth, and prevent autonomic complications after spinal cord injury,” said Popovich, who also is executive director of Ohio State’s Belford Center for Spinal Cord Injury.
This research used a mouse model of spinal cord injury. However, abnormal, potentially life-threatening autonomic reflexes also occur in other animals and in people with spinal cord injury, said Popovich, who is also a member of Ohio State’s Institute for Behavioral Research Medicine.
Autonomic dysfunction or “dysautonomia,” is a major problem for people living with spinal cord injuries.

In people and animals with spinal cord injury, normally harmless stimuli, such as a full bladder, can suppress the body’s immune system and cause uncontrolled changes in blood pressure.
This leads to life threatening complications including heart attack, stroke, metabolic disease and severe infections, like pneumonia.
There is currently no treatment that prevents dysautonomia.
“We consider this a major finding,” said first author Faith Brennan, PhD, who began this work at Ohio State and is now a neuroscience researcher at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. “Although this is a well-known consequence of spinal cord injury, research has mostly focused on how the injury affects neurons that control autonomic function.”
Improving autonomic function is a top priority for people living with spinal cord injury. Limiting the effects of dysautonomia after spinal cord injury would significantly increase quality of life and life expectancy, Popovich said.
Next steps for this research will focus on identifying the specific neuron-derived signals that control microglia, causing them to remodel spinal autonomic circuitry.
“Identifying these mechanisms could lead to the design of new, highly specific therapies to treat dysautonomia after spinal cord injury. It could also help in other neurological complications where dysautonomia develops, including multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, stroke and traumatic brain injury,” Popovich said.
This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Ray W. Poppleton Endowment, the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation and the Wings for Life Spinal Research Foundation.

A new detailed analysis of a patient’s second cancer after receiving CAR-T therapy for the initial cancer provides rare but important insights intended to offer helpful guidance for oncologists and pathologists about the clinical presentation and pathologic features involved in a CAR-T related second cancer.
The finding is reported June 13, 2024, in the New England Journal of Medicine.
CAR-T therapy is described by many as a new and promising treatment for blood cancers. CAR-T therapy is made from a patient’s own cells whereby immune system T cells are collected and re-engineered in the laboratory to produce proteins on their surface, called chimeric antigen receptors, or CARs. The CARs can recognize and then bind to specific proteins on the surface of cancer cells. The therapy is used to treat blood cancers such as multiple myeloma, the type of cancer the patient in the case study had when treated with CAR-T.
“The established value of CAR-T treatment and its benefits to cancer patients is significant,” says the study’s first author, Metin Ozdemirli, MD, PhD, professor of pathology at Georgetown University School of Medicine and attending physician and director of Hematopathology and Hematology Laboratories at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital. “Our case study describes a rare event in a patient who received CAR-T therapy and provides very useful information for physicians treating patients with this approach. Armed with our insights, physicians can be on the lookout for similar conditions and potentially detect secondary tumors earlier and manage them better.”
Of the estimated 30,000 patients treated with CAR-T therapy, reported second cancers are rare; the U.S. FDA has tracked approximately 25 cases of CAR-T cell second cancers, usually lymphomas, as occurred in the patient in this case study following CAR-T cell therapy.
How the CAR-T cell became a lymphoma is not known. It is possible that the cells had lymphoma-causing mutations when they were originally collected from the patient and CAR-T treatment caused activation and expansion of those cells; or the mutations might have occurred when the CAR-T cells were prepared outside the patient; or the CAR-T cells may have acquired the mutations after they were given back to the patient; or any combination of these circumstances.
Four months after receiving CAR-T therapy, the patient in the case study developed progressively worsening non-bloody diarrhea and lost 12 pounds. Results of bloods tests led to an endoscopic exam revealing ulcerations in the duodenum, the first part of the small intestine. The patient received treatment, but symptoms persisted, resembling an autoimmune disease. After numerous additional tests, biopsies taken revealed the culprit — indolent T-cell lymphoma of the gastrointestinal tract, similar to other cases, but further molecular analysis showed this to be a CAR-T positive case.

Ozdemirli says this case study suggests that physicians treating patients with CAR-T should always consider CAR-T a potential source for new cancers and autoimmune problems. “When we know what to look for ahead of time, it becomes easier to catch problems earlier,” he says.
Ozdemirli also points out, “An interesting finding here is the type of cells that survived the initial treatment and became cancerous. Immune cells that are collected from patients to prepare the CAR-T cocktail are not a homogenous single-cell type. They contain a mixture of multiple cells, and in the case of this patient, what is called a helper T cell, an essential infection-fighting cell, unexpectedly was the culprit.”
Though uncommon, second cancers following chemotherapy or radiation therapy can develop. Just like any tissue in the body has the risk of developing cancer during a lifespan, CAR-T cells carry the same risk. Ozdemirli says so far there is no evidence to suggest that the process of preparing the CAR-T population outside the body increases that risk.
Importantly for diagnostic and treatment purposes in the future, the researchers note that switchable cell therapies might allow patients to take a medication to tune the amount of CAR-T cell activity from day to day, hopefully reducing toxic side effects. Advancing this research and knowledge is an important next step for the investigators.

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Louisiana’s southeastern corridor is sometimes known colloquially as “Cancer Alley” for its high cancer incidence rates connected to industrial air pollution. Most of the region’s air pollution-related health risks are attributed to ethylene oxide, a volatile compound used to make plastics and sterilize medical equipment. Researchers reporting in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology measured concerning levels of ethylene oxide in this area with mobile optical instruments, a technique they say could improve health risk assessments.
In 2016, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) classified ethylene oxide as carcinogenic to humans, particularly when it is inhaled. Despite significant concern over chronic ethylene oxide exposure for people living between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, there are no published reports of ambient concentrations of the carcinogen that aren’t derived from industry self-reported emissions data. So, Peter DeCarlo and colleagues proposed measuring the levels of this gas using optical instruments that quickly measure airborne chemicals and provide results in real time.
They used a mobile monitoring system with equipment mounted on a small truck or van. These mobile laboratories drove a fixed route along a heavily industrialized portion of the corridor. One small truck carried a tunable infrared laser direction absorption spectrometer, which measured ambient ethylene oxide in the surrounding air. The van carried a cavity ringdown spectrometer to detect downwind of petrochemical sites contaminant plumes, i.e., mixtures of ethylene oxide and other chemicals, which indicate the type of facility that emitted them.DeCarlo and the team completed 23 130-mile laps with their mobile monitoring vans from January to February 2023. All of the ethylene oxide measurements were higher than EPA estimates, which were gleaned from industry-reported emissions. Specifically, the researchers’ ambient air measurements revealed that most of the region had ethylene oxide levels that correspond to risk levels above EPA’s acceptable upper limit. A few locations had contaminant concentrations that represent potentially serious health risks for facility workers. And the team’s second van, with the cavity ringdown spectrometer, identified chemical plumes up to 7 miles from their likely sources, which are beyond the 6-mile distance of “fenceline communities.” EPA defines fenceline communities as those where people live close enough to highly polluting facilities that they could be directly affected by the emissions of operation.
The researchers hope that this demonstration of a mobile monitoring system helps increase accurate measurements of hazardous air pollution in an area densely populated with ethylene oxide emitters. Their work also highlights important issues related to current detection and reporting methods and associated health impacts on people living near potential pollution sources.
The authors acknowledge funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
Some coauthors are employed at Aerodyne Research, Inc., which provided a mobile laboratory and field sampling equipment. Some coauthors are employed at Picarro, Inc. which manufactures one of the instruments used in the study.