Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and the University of Innsbruck in Austria have developed a simpler and more effective screening method for cervical cancer than the method used today. A comprehensive study published in Nature Medicine shows that the test detects significantly more cancers and precancerous stages.
Cervical cancer screening is essential for early detection and prevention. Most countries have a very extensive screening program that starts with testing for different variants of the human papillomavirus (HPV) that causes cervical cancer. In the case of an HPV-positive test, this is followed by so-called cytological analysis, the examination of gynaecological cell samples by microscopy, which is dependent on human interpretation.
The new molecular test WID-qCIN, which could replace the cytological analysis, can automatically analyse epigenetic changes in cells, i.e. changes that affect which genes are active and which are not. These changes are influenced by factors such as environment, lifestyle, and aging, and can increase the risk of cancer and other diseases.
The current study included more than 28,000 women over the age of 30 who underwent screening in Stockholm between January and March 2017. The researchers analysed a total of 2,377 HPV-positive samples with the WID-qCIN test combined with a test for two high-risk HPV types (HPV 16 and 18). In this way, they were able to detect 100 per cent of all invasive cervical cancer and 93 per cent of all serious precancerous lesions that occurred within a year of sampling.
In addition, the new test, in combination with the HPV 16/18 test, was able to predict 69 per cent of all cancers and precancerous lesions up to six years after the sample was taken. This can be compared with only 18 per cent with today’s screening method.
“By integrating the WID-qCIN test into our screening programs, we would be able to identify more cancer cases while reducing the need for invasive procedures,” says Joakim Dillner, Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the Department of Clinical Science, Intervention and Technology, Karolinska Institutet and co-author of the study.
When cell changes are detected in today’s screening program, the woman undergoes a vaginal examination, a so-called colposcopy, where the gynaecologist looks at the cervix with the help of a microscope and, if necessary, takes a biopsy. The biopsy involves a surgical procedure that, among other things, can lead to negative pregnancy outcomes like premature delivery. The results of the current study suggest that implementation of the WID-qCIN test could reduce the number of colposcopy examinations by 40 per cent.
“This would mean a significant improvement compared to today’s screening methods, which were introduced in the 1960s,” says the study’s last author Martin Widschwendter, Professor at the University of Innsbruck and visiting Professor at the Department of Women’s and Children’s Health, Karolinska Institutet. “With its simplicity and objective assessment, the WID-qCIN test can improve the effectiveness of these programs and support the global strategy to eliminate cervical cancer.”
The study was funded by the federal state of Tyrol and the EU’s research and innovation programme Horizon 2020. Several of the authors are inventors of patents related to the WID-qCIN test and are shareholders in Sola Diagnostics GmbH, which holds the rights to commercialise the test. Co-author Karin Sundström has received consulting fees and research grants from Merck Sharp & Dohme for studies on HPV vaccination in Sweden.

Researchers have revealed how a channel that controls cellular potassium levels causes metabolic rewiring in breast cancer cells, promoting tumour growth.
The study, published as a Reviewed Preprint in eLife and now appearing as the final version, was described by the editors as providing convincing evidence that an intracellular subpopulation of a specific potassium channel reprograms breast cancer cells towards the Warburg phenotype, one of the metabolic hallmarks of cancer.
Ion channels are gateways within cells that tightly control the inward and outward flow of essential ions, such as potassium and calcium, and are thought to be critically linked to cancer malignancy and progression.
Cancer cells show increased energy demands due to their high growth rates and can switch their metabolism from a process requiring oxygen to one that allows them to grow in oxygen and nutrient-poor environments — known as the Warburg effect. Researchers at the Lukowski lab, University of Tübingen, Germany, together with inter-/national collaboration partners, have now demonstrated that these metabolic processes rely on ions such as potassium and calcium, and their dynamics are regulated by the ‘large-conductance Ca2+ activated K+ channel’ — or BKCa. This channel has been previously reported to promote breast cancer progression, but the exact mechanism underlying this effect was unknown.
To close this gap in knowledge, the multidisciplinary research team used BKCa-proficient and deficient human cancer cell lines, as well as cancer cells from mice lacking BKCa to study the role of different BKCa subpopulations in cancer cell metabolism and growth. They found that breast cancer cells lacking BKCa had lower intracellular calcium levels. Moreover, this change in calcium levels occurred not only in the main body of the cell but also within substructures such as mitochondria — the tiny power plants that cells use to produce energy.
Given these results, the team explored whether BKCa also affected metabolic processes in breast cancer cells. As they anticipated, in cells with BKCa there was an increased output of lactate and lower oxygen consumption than in breast cancer cells without BKCa, suggesting a metabolic rewiring mediated by this type of ion channel.
To explore this further, the authors then looked at how different sources of energy are used in the mitochondria when BKCa is functional. Cells can use and generate energy in the form of a molecule called ATP. When BKCa is present in mitochondria, cells prefer to consume rather than generate ATP. Moreover, this switch causes increased hydrogen peroxide levels which, in turn, cause further genetic damage and contributes to cancer progression.
Having found that BKCa helps cancer cells with reprogramming their metabolism, Dr. Bischof, first author of the study, specifically looked for evidence of the Warburg effect by measuring lactate concentrations over time; higher levels of lactate secretion imply a shift towards metabolism that does not use oxygen. As expected, the presence of BKCa not only increased lactate secretion, but also increased the ability of breast cancer cells to grow without oxygen. Together, these results point to a significant malignancy-promoting effect of mitochondrial BKCa in breast cancer.
Finally, Bischof et al. explored whether mitochondrial BKCa was present in primary human-derived breast cancer tissue. They found that 551 tissue samples tested positively, with 10 showing significantly high expression of BKCa.
“Our experiments highlight the presence of an ion channel within the energy production machinery in breast cancer cells that promotes profound bioenergetic changes and ultimately triggers the growth of breast cancer cells in an oxygen-depleted environment, such as that found in a solid tumour,” concludes senior author Robert Lukowski, Professor of Experimental Pharmacology at the University of Tübingen. “Taken together, expression of mitochondrial BKCa could be used as a prognostic or therapeutic marker in breast cancer patients and presents a potentially new anti-cancer treatment strategy.”

A new study by Florida Atlantic University’s Schmidt College of Medicine has uncovered a disturbing trend in drug-related infant deaths in the United States from 2018 to 2022.
Infant deaths are those that occur between the time a child is born and age 1. Drug-involved deaths are those in which drugs are either the primary cause of death or a contributing factor and may occur due to maternal drug use, inadvertent or accidental intake of specific prescriptions, illicit or non-medical use of drugs and other incidents where drugs were linked to death.
Results of the study, published in the Journal of Perinatal Medicine, show that in the U.S. from 2018 to 2022, drug-involved infant deaths more than doubled (120% increase) from 10.8% in 2018 to 24.4% in 2022. The largest increase was observed between 2019 (16.9%) and 2022 with the greatest proportion of drug-related infant deaths occurring in 2021 (25.8%). Overall, relative to all other causes of infant mortality, drug-involved deaths became more prevalent after 2019.
Findings show that drug-involved infant deaths also were higher in the postnatal period, ages 28 to 364 days (81.4%), relative to deaths due to all other causes during the same period (34.6%). The most prevalent underlying causes of death included assault (homicide) by drugs, medicaments and biological substances (35.6%) followed by poisoning from exposure to narcotics and psychodysleptics (hallucinogens) (15.6%), and accidental poisoning from exposure to antiepileptic, sedative-hypnotic, antiparkinsonism and psychotropic drugs (10.8%). The most common multiple causes of drug-involved infant deaths were psychostimulants with abuse potential of synthetic narcotics.
In addition, a significant proportion of infants who died from drug-involved causes were born to non-Hispanic white (60.4%) and non-Hispanic Black mothers (28.5%). Furthermore, drug-induced mortality was 56.5% in male infants and 43.7% in female infants, a difference which also was statistically significant.
“The differences we observed by race/ethnicity in drug-involved deaths, predominantly among non-Hispanic white and Black infants require a multifaceted approach for clinical and public health interventions,” said Panagiota “Yiota” Kitsantas, Ph.D., corresponding author and professor and chair of the Department of Population Health and Social Medicine, FAU Schmidt College of Medicine. “Addressing the social determinants of health, enhancing access to addiction treatment and implementing culturally sensitive interventions may be important to prevent infant deaths in vulnerable populations. In addition, the underlying causes, which included drug-related assault and various forms of poisoning, also may be areas for clinical and public health interventions.”
From 2018 to 2022, drug-involved infant deaths accounted for 1.18% of all infant deaths, a notable rise from the previously reported 0.64% from 2015 to 2017. This increase was particularly pronounced during COVID-19, raising questions that require further studies. During this period, drug overdose mortality also increased substantially among pregnant and postpartum women.

The researchers note that during COVID-19 there was reduced access to prenatal care, the emergence of health care deserts and hospital closures, especially in rural areas. These may have contributed, at least in part, to the observed increases in drug-related infant deaths, although more research is warranted.
“Given the alarming increase in the number of drug overdose deaths in the general population, especially among pregnant and postpartum women, findings from our study are both important and timely,” said Maria C. Mejia, M.D., senior author and a professor of population health and social medicine, FAU Schmidt College of Medicine. “Drug-involved deaths in infants represent a potentially avoidable cause that should be considered in efforts to reduce infant mortality in the United States. Effective strategies will require collaborative efforts among health providers, public health agencies and community partners, and should focus on preventing and treating maternal substance use disorders, enhancing prenatal care access and addressing broader social and behavioral risk factors.”
For the study, researchers used data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research (WONDER) and selected the period of 2018 to 2022 because 2018 was pre-COVID-19 and 2022 represents the most recent data available. Infant deaths were described by year of death, underlying cause and multiple cause of death, age of infant at time of death, gender and maternal race/ethnicity (non-Hispanic white, non-Hispanic Black, non-Hispanic, Hispanic and other race).
Study co-authors are Charles H. Hennekens, M.D., Dr.PH, first Sir Richard Doll Professor of Medicine and senior academic advisor; Sebastian Densley and Meera Rao, FAU medical students; Lea Sacca, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Population Health and Social Medicine; and Robert S. Levine, M.D., affiliate professor of medicine; all within FAU’s Schmidt College of Medicine.

Scientists at Duke-NUS Medical School have identified how the first domino falls after a person encounters an allergen, such as peanuts, shellfish, pollen or dust mites. Their discovery, published in the April issue of Nature Immunology, could herald the development of drugs to prevent these severe reactions.
It is well established that when mast cells, a type of immune cell, mistake a harmless substance, such as peanuts or dust mites, as a threat, they release an immediate first wave of bioactive chemicals against the perceived threat. When mast cells, which reside under the skin, around blood vessels and in the linings of the airways and the gastrointestinal tract, simultaneously release their pre-stored load of bioactive chemicals into the blood, instant and systemic shock can result, which can be lethal without quick intervention.
More than 10 per cent of the global population suffers from food allergies, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). As allergy rates continue to climb, so does the incidence of food-triggered anaphylaxis and asthma worldwide. In Singapore, asthma affects one in five children while food allergies are already the leading cause of anaphylactic shock.
What the team at Duke-NUS has now discovered is that the release of particulate mast cell granules, which contain these bioactive chemicals, is controlled by two members of an intracellular multiprotein complex called inflammasome. Until now, these inflammasome proteins were only known to spontaneously assemble within immune cells to secrete soluble chemicals to alert other parts of the immune system upon detection of an infection.
Professor Soman Abraham, Grace Kerby Distinguished Professor of Pathology at Duke University, who led this research when working in Duke-NUS’ Emerging Infectious Diseases Programme, said:
“We discovered that the inflammasome components played a surprisingly crucial role in transporting particulate mast cell granules which are typically packed in the cell centre to the cell surface where they are released. This surprising discovery gives us a precise target where we can intervene to prevent the cascade of events initiated in mast cells that leads to anaphylactic shock.”
Prof Abraham and his team’s eureka moment came while observing mice[1] whose mast cells lacked either of the two inflammasome proteins, NLRP3 or ASC. When these animals were exposed to allergens, they failed to experience anaphylactic shock. However, anaphylactic shock was observed when mast cell NLRP3 and ASC proteins assembled and bound to individual intracellular granules, forming a complex the researchers call granulosome, facilitating the granules’ movement along tracks formed by the cytoskeleton within the mast cell — akin to hooking them onto a set of “rail tracks.”
Dr Pradeep Bist, co-first author of the paper and a principal research scientist with Duke-NUS’ Emerging Infectious Diseases Programme, said:

“Upon mast cell activation, we observed rapid granule movement on dynamic tracks known as microtubules to the cell membrane, where these granules were promptly released from the cell. However, in mast cells deficient in either NLRP3 or ASC proteins, we found no sign of intracellular granule movement and none of these granules were released.”
Having demonstrated the trafficking role of NLRP3 and ASC, the team then turned to known inflammasome inhibitors to test whether they could prevent this event from taking place.
Using an inflammasome-blocking drug very similar to those undergoing clinical trials for chronic inflammatory diseases, called CY-09, they administered the therapy to mice before introducing an allergen. They found that in their preclinical model, they were able to effectively prevent anaphylactic shock with this drug.
Dr Andrea Mencarelli, from the Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine’s Immune Therapy Institute, Shanghai China, and who co-first authored the paper while working at Duke-NUS’ Emerging Infectious Diseases Programme, said:
“It was noteworthy that by employing a drug that specifically blocked inflammasome protein activity, we were able to selectively block the release of mast cells’ pre-stored chemicals without impacting other potentially beneficial activities of mast cells.”
While not a cure, this could offer people living with severe allergies a new tool to prevent the onset of a potentially traumatic reaction. Currently, emergency treatments are taken in the immediate aftermath of the first symptoms developing. These treatments need to be administered within a narrow window of time to be effective and they also have severe side effects.

“I could see this bringing peace of mind to parents of children with severe food allergies when they encounter situations where they can’t be sure whether there’s an exposure risk. While we don’t want to deactivate this part of the immune system for prolonged periods, this could potentially provide short-term protection,” said Prof Abraham, whose team is now working on optimising the dosage and frequency of use of this drug to achieve the best protective effects against anaphylactic shock.
“After this, we hope to do the same for asthma and allergic skin reactions.”
Professor Patrick Tan, Senior Vice-Dean for Research at Duke-NUS, said:
“This breakthrough has tremendous translational potential and represents a paradigm shift not only for further research but more importantly by enhancing the quality of life for those at risk of severe allergic reactions. It’s a beacon of hope, especially for parents of young children who live with this constant concern.”
[1] The study was conducted according to the National Advisory Committee for Laboratory Animal Research (NACLAR) guidelines

Nutrition is a key determinant of health. But American physicians aren’t receiving effective training to counsel patients on the topic, according to a new paper from University of Georgia researchers.
Current medical training focuses on weight and body mass index (BMI), exacerbating anti-obesity bias and increasing the risk of eating disorders, the authors said. And it doesn’t give future doctors adequate education on how to encourage healthier eating habits.
“Mainstream medicine is still very focused on linking weight to health,” said Kearney Gunsalus, lead author of the paper and an assistant professor at the Augusta University/University of Georgia Medical Partnership. “Because people with obesity and higher body weights are more likely to have health problems, it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that the weight itself is causing those problems. And if you assume that the weight is causing the problems, it seems logical to assume that weight loss is the solution.”
Research has shown that being overweight may not mean being unhealthy, the researchers said.
The researchers advocate that small changes to medical education and in how health care providers interact with their patients could have a real impact on some of the greatest health challenges facing the world today.
BMI is not an accurate measure of health, cardiometabolic health is
BMI has long been the standard for sorting individuals into four main categories: underweight, healthy weight, overweight or obese. And it’s taught in medical school as a way of gauging a patient’s general health.

The problem is it’s not accurate, the researchers said. BMI overestimates the number of people who are unhealthy.
Medical education on nutrition should instead focus on objective measures of cardiometabolic health.
Cardiometabolic health includes things like blood pressure, insulin resistance, cholesterol levels and more. And it is a much stronger predictor of overall health.
Previous research demonstrated that almost half of Americans deemed overweight by BMI standards are actually metabolically healthy. About one in three whose BMI is in the “healthy” range are actually unhealthy when assessed by more comprehensive measures.
“When you look at some of the newest studies on obesity surgeries and the use of medications like Ozempic and Wegovy, it appears that patients can see health benefits even without weight loss,” said Dr. Ellen House, co-author of the publication and an associate professor at the Medical Partnership. “We really love things that are clear-cut and black and white in medicine. But if the benefits precede and appear to be independent of weight loss, we need to shift the conversations physicians have with their patients to focus more on health and not weight loss.”
Anti-fat bias negatively affects patient care
In addition to focusing exclusively on weight loss and BMI, current medical education often neglects to address weight stigma, the researchers said.

Weight stigma connects obesity with moral failures, laziness and gluttony without accounting for the biologic and systemic factors that intersect with weight. These factors include availability of fresh, healthy foods, the ability to afford those foods and access to safe spaces to exercise, among others.
This bias may lead physicians to be less empathetic toward their overweight patients and to provide lower quality care.
“Overweight patients are less likely to get the appropriate screenings or treatments for their medical concerns,” said House, who is also a board-certified psychiatrist. “Physicians will miss the asthma, they’ll miss the cancer, because they attribute symptoms to weight when weight isn’t what’s causing the patient’s concerns.”
Those negative interactions where health concerns are dismissed with a simple “just lose weight” demoralizes patients and can make them less likely to share problems going forward. Shaming patients for their weight can sour patients on the health care system in general, prompting them to stop seeking medical care even when they really need it, the researchers said.
Reframing the conversations between doctor and patient to focus on healthful behaviors, such as moving more and avoiding labeling foods as inherently “good” or “bad,” can go a long way in encouraging individuals to move toward health.
“I think doctors are trying to help people be healthier by advising them to lose weight; they’re just not aware of the harms that can be done by that advice,” Gunsalus said. “If I could wave a magic wand and have doctors do one thing differently when interacting with their patients, it would be to start from the assumption that every patient wants to be and is capable of being healthy.”

Using artificial intelligence (AI), breast radiologists in Denmark have improved breast cancer screening performance and reduced the rate of false-positive findings. Results of the study were published today in Radiology, a journal of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).
Mammography successfully reduces breast cancer mortality, but also carries the risk of false-positive findings. In recent years, researchers have studied the use of AI systems in screening.
“We believe AI has the potential to improve screening performance,” said Andreas D. Lauritzen, Ph.D., a post-doctoral student at the University of Copenhagen and researcher at Gentofte Hospital in Denmark.
When used to triage likely normal screening results or assist with decision support, AI also can substantially reduce radiologist workload.
“Population-based screening with mammography reduces breast cancer mortality, but it places a substantial workload on radiologists who must read a large number of mammograms, the majority of which don’t warrant a recall of the patient,” Dr. Lauritzen said. “The reading workload is further compounded when screening programs employ double reading to improve cancer detection and decrease false-positive recalls.”
Dr. Lauritzen and colleagues set out to compare workload and screening performance in two cohorts of women who underwent screening before and after AI implementation.
The retrospective study compared two groups of women between the ages of 50 and 69 who underwent biennial mammography screening in the Capital Region of Denmark.

In the first group, two radiologists read the mammograms of women screened between October 2020 and November 2021 before the implementation of AI. The screening mammograms of the second group of women performed between November 2021 and October 2022 were initially analyzed by AI. Mammograms deemed likely to be normal by AI were then read by one of 19 specialized full-time breast radiologists (called a single-read). The remaining mammograms were read by two radiologists (called a double-read) with AI-assisted decision support.
The commercially available AI system used for screening was trained by deep learning models to highlight and rate suspicious lesions and calcifications within mammograms. All women who underwent mammographic screening were followed for at least 180 days. Invasive cancers and ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) detected through screening were confirmed through needle biopsy or surgical specimens.
In total, 60,751 women were screened without AI, and 58,246 women were screened with the AI system. In the AI implementation group, 66.9% (38,977) of the screenings were single-read, and 33.1% (19,269) were double-read with AI assistance.
Compared to screening without AI, screening with the AI system detected significantly more breast cancers (0.82% versus 0.70%) and had a lower false-positive rate (1.63% versus 2.39%).
“In the AI-screened group, the recall rate decreased by 20.5 percent, and the radiologists’ reading workload was lowered by 33.4 percent,” Dr. Lauritzen said.
The positive predictive value of AI screening was also greater than that of screening without AI (33.5% versus 22.5%). In the AI group, a higher proportion of invasive cancers detected were 1 centimeter or less in size (44.93% vs. 36.60%).

“All screening performance indicators improved except for the node-negative rate which showed no evidence of change,” Dr. Lauritzen said.
Dr. Lauritzen said more research is needed to evaluate long-term outcomes and ensure overdiagnosis does not increase.
“Radiologists typically have access to the women’s previous screening mammograms, but the AI system does not,” he said. “That’s something we’d like to work on in the future.”
It is also important to note that not all countries follow the same breast cancer screening protocols and intervals. U.S. breast cancer screening protocols differ from protocols used in Denmark.

Wistar scientists have built upon BTE technology to develop new and improved recombinant and synthetic DNA versions of therapeutic antibodies that target CA9, called Persistent Multivalent T Cell Engager (CA9-PMTE), that shows promise in pre-clinical models as a potent, long-lasting treatment against ccRCC.  Advanced clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) is a deadly form of kidney cancer with few treatment options; even with new immunotherapies, only around one in 10 patients ultimately survive.
Antibody therapies called bispecific T cell engagers (BTEs) have emerged as effective treatments for some blood cancers but have been more difficult to develop for solid tumors. While clinically successful, first-generation BTEs suffer a short half-life. Now, Wistar scientists have built upon BTE technology to develop new and improved recombinant and synthetic DNA versions of therapeutic antibodies that target CA9, called Persistent Multivalent T Cell Engager (CA9-PMTE), that shows promise in pre-clinical models as a potent, long-lasting treatment against ccRCC.
In this study, the researchers also demonstrated that the more potent therapy could be delivered using synthetic DNA, which allows therapeutic production directly in patients. “The big takeaway is that there may one day be a promising new therapy for kidney cancer that has a mechanism of action that would be compatible for combination with checkpoint inhibitors, which is the current therapy of choice for this type of cancer,” said first author Ryan O’Connell, a predoctoral trainee in the Weiner lab at The Wistar Institute’s Vaccine & Immunotherapy Center. “What’s more, this improved bispecific antibody is outperforming the traditional bispecific antibodies in our studies, both in efficacy for treating ccRCC and in the approach’s ability to last much longer in the body, thus potentially being treatment-sparing.”
One reason clear cell renal cell carcinoma is so difficult to treat is because it is a so-called “cold” tumor — one in which cancer cells are unrecognizable by immune cells. This means that killer T-cells — a type of immune cell that seeks out and destroys diseased cells and cancers — are unable to recognize the tumor cells. As a result, immunotherapies that work by enhancing the T cells’ killing potency without improving their ability to bind to their targets are less effective against cold tumors.
These new forms of bispecific T cell engagers overcome this problem by functioning like “double-sided tape,” O’Connell explains. One side of the drug molecule binds to the T-cell, while the other side is engineered to bind to the specific type of tumor cell being treated; these molecules are “bispecific” because each end of the molecule is specific to one of two targets, the T cells and the cancer cells. This empowers the T-cells to attack and kill the cancer — even in cold tumors — by supplementing their ability to bind to the tumor.
But while BTEs are a promising new therapy for many difficult-to-treat cancers, they do have some limitations, including a short half-life (which is how long it takes for the active dose of a drug in one’s body to decrease by 50%). Most BTE drugs break down quickly, sometimes within a matter of hours, which means they are only effective for a short time.
In preclinical models, the team tested the efficacy of novelly designed anti-ccRCC BTE variants developed to enhance the interactions between T cells and the targeted cancer. These were developed to be delivered using synthetic DNA technology — a method of delivery that allows the body to assemble the desired drug design from DNA-based code themselves. The researchers compared traditional BTEs with a newer format design termed persistent BTEs (PBTEs), which have a longer half-life but use the same targeting system as older BTEs. They found that, while the initial PBTEs did last longer than the traditional BTEs, the new design reduced the overall anticancer potency.

The research team then created a new molecule by taking an existing PBTE and adding additional binding domains to better “see” and bind to the cancer. This novel, alternative design — called a persistent multivalent T cell engager (PMTE) — proved to be highly potent while also maintaining a longer half-life than the traditional BTE design.
Senior author David Weiner, Ph.D., executive vice president of The Wistar Institute and director of the Vaccine & Immunotherapy Center, said the new format represents the potential for an important new tool for enhancing cancer therapy.
“Bispecifics in general are an important technology that offer significant advantages in on-target anticancer potency,” he says. “The new PMTEs appear not only more effective at binding to tumor cells and killing the cancer, but they also require a much lower dose and, we have reason to believe, a lower frequency of therapy — which could potentially translate to improved outcomes and a better patient experience at a lower cost.”
The researchers are now studying these new PMTEs in combination with other immunotherapies as well as expanding designs to additional difficult-to-treat cancers.
Co-authors: Ryan P. O’Connell and Daniel Park of The Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and The Wistar Institute; Kevin Liaw, Pratik S. Bhojnagarwala, Devivasha Bordoloi, Nicholas Shupin, Danie Kulp, and David B. Weiner of The Wistar Institute; Nils Wellhausen of The Center for Cellular Immunotherapies at the Perelman School of Medicine; Carl H. June of The Center for Cellular Immunotherapies at the Perelman School of Medicine and The Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at The University of Pennsylvania; and Chris Chuckran of LUMICKS
Work supported by: National Institutes of Health grants T32 CA11529915 and P30 CA010815; The Jill and Mark Fishman Foundation; the W.W. Smith Charitable Trust; and Inovio Pharmaceuticals.

A record number of people in England were diagnosed with gonorrhoea last year,

An independent group of experts is meeting Tuesday to consider whether to allow use of this illegal drug, also known as Ecstasy, to treat PTSD. The Food and Drug Administration is weighing whether to approve the use of MDMA, also known as Ecstasy, for treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. An independent advisory panel of experts will review studies on Tuesday and is expected to vote on whether the treatment would be effective and whether its benefits outweigh the risks.The panel will hear from Lykos Therapeutics, which has submitted evidence from clinical trials in an effort to obtain agency approval to sell the drug legally to treat people with a combination of MDMA and talk therapy.Millions of Americans suffer from PTSD, including military veterans who are at high risk of suicide. No new treatment for PTSD has been approved in more than 20 years.What is MDMA?Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) is a synthetic psychoactive drug first developed by Merck in 1912. After being resynthesized in the mid-1970s by Alexander Shulgin, a psychedelic chemist in the Bay Area, MDMA gained popularity among therapists. Early research suggested significant therapeutic potential for a number of mental health conditions.MDMA is an entactogen, or empathogen, that fosters self-awareness, feelings of empathy and social connectedness. It is not a classic psychedelic like LSD or psilocybin, drugs that can cause altered realities and hallucinations. Among recreational users, MDMA is commonly known as molly or Ecstasy.In 1985, as the drug became a staple at dance clubs and raves, the Drug Enforcement Administration classified MDMA as a Schedule I substance, a drug defined as having no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.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.

Artists and community organizations around the world are increasingly turning to art to create positive social change.Using her arms as a makeshift clapboard, a Sudanese woman in a black hijab and black-and-white caftan clapped her hands together, signaling the beginning of the rehearsal. The other amateur Thespians, wearing comic stick-on mustaches, moved to their marks, improvising a scene in a women’s beauty salon where one patron’s hair is accidentally dyed blue.As the scene ended, all the women were in hysterics, ribbing each other over how they could better play their parts next time. Scenes like this are common at the Kuluhenna Creative Workshop, which is held at a community clubhouse on the outskirts of this Yorkshire city. The workshop is open to all local women, but with a focus on immigrant communities, including refugees and asylum seekers.The 90-minute class, which the Mafwa Theater has held since 2019, is a happy space. Each week, some 15 women gather to tell stories, dance, act and gossip. They are provided with bus passes, a play area for their young children and an on-site health worker in case any of the women want to talk.Eman Elsayed, a mother of three originally from Egypt, said before she joined the workshop in 2020, she was “depressed, isolated and fed up” with her life in Leeds. But eventually, especially after joining Mafwa Theater’s associate artists program in 2021, she felt her life change.“Art, it’s a magic wand,” said Elsayed, who now has a paid job doing community outreach for the program. “But you need to believe, and you need to take the time to see what it will do.”Mafwa’s project is just one example of a larger trend — as more and more groups and individuals worldwide are using the arts to empower, unite and even help heal people who have suffered trauma, from war and natural disaster, or discrimination, poverty and displacement.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.