(Press-News.org) Targeted radiation is often used to study and treat diverse cancer types. A multidisciplinary research team based at the University of Chicago Medicine has recently focused on a type of cell that releases a protein that enhances resistance to cancer therapies and promotes tumor progression.
The study focused on Ter cells, which are extra medullary erythroid precursers that secrete the neuropeptide artemin. In the study, published February 24, 2020, in Science Translational Medicine, the researchers showed that local tumor radiotherapy, systemic immunotherapy or the combination of both treatments were able to deplete Ter cells in the spleen, reduce artemin production and limit tumor progression both in the locally irradiated tumors as well as outside the radiation fields.
The results identified several targets that could "potentially improve outcomes after radio- and immunotherapy," said Ralph Weichselbaum, MD, Daniel K. Ludwig Distinguished Service Professor and chair of radiation and cellular oncology at the University of Chicago. "The promise of these approaches is exciting."
This study used animal models and samples from three different groups of patients who had received some combination of radiotherapy and chemotherapy, immunotherapy and radio-immunotherapy respectively for various forms of cancer, including lung cancer and melanoma.
Combinations of Ter cell depletion, blockade of artemin signaling, and immunotherapy, according to the authors, led to enhanced control of tumor burden in mice. Ter cell depletion, the authors noted, was dependent on an intact adaptive immune response, mediated by interferon-y.
Targeting the Ter artemin axis "enhanced the efficacy of immunotherapy in model systems," Weichselbaum said. Reduced numbers of Ter cells and reduced expression of artemin and artemin signaling partners were all associated with improved outcomes in patients receiving radiotherapy, radioimmunotherapy and immunotherapy.
"Together, our study demonstrates the mutually apposing regulatory effects between radiotherapy or immunotherapy and tumor-induced splenic Ter cells," the authors suggest.
These immunotherapies and combined treatments with radiotherapy, according to the authors, "warrant further research to understand the interactions between them and tumor-promoting pathways."
INFORMATION:
"Radiotherapy and immunotherapy converge on elimination of tumor-promoting erythoid progenitor cells through adaptive immunity" was published February 24, 2020, in Science Translational Medicine. Additional authors are Y. Hou of Xi'an Jiaotong University and Ludwig Center for Metastasis Research at the University of Chicago; Xinshuang Yu of First Affiliated Hospital of Shandong; Zhida Liu, Xuezhi Cao and Yang-Xin Fu of University of Texas Southwest Medical Center; Enyu Rao of Xuzhou Medical University; Wenjun Wu of Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia; Sean Z. Luo of Whitney Young High School, Chicago; and H.L. Liang, Xiaona Huang, Liangliang Wang, Lei Li, Jason Bugno, Yanbin Fu, Steven Chmura, Wenxin Zheng, Ainhoa Arina, Jessica Jutzy, Anne R. McCall, Everett Vokes and Sean Pitroda of the University of Chicago.
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The University of Chicago Medicine, with a history dating back to 1927, is one of the nation's leading academic health systems. It unites the missions of the University of Chicago Medical Center, Pritzker School of Medicine and the Biological Sciences Division. Twelve Nobel Prize winners in physiology or medicine have been affiliated with the University of Chicago Medicine. Its main Hyde Park campus is home to the Center for Care and Discovery, Bernard Mitchell Hospital, Comer Children's Hospital and the Duchossois Center for Advanced Medicine. It also has ambulatory facilities in Orland Park, South Loop and River East as well as affiliations and partnerships that create a regional network of care. UChicago Medicine offers a full range of specialty-care services for adults and children through more than 40 institutes and centers including an NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center. Together with Harvey-based Ingalls Memorial, UChicago Medicine has 1,296 licensed beds, nearly 1,300 attending physicians, over 2,800 nurses and about 970 residents and fellows.
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Researchers believe they have closed the case of what killed the dinosaurs, definitively linking their extinction with an asteroid that slammed into Earth 66 million years ago by finding a key piece of evidence: asteroid dust inside the impact crater.
Death by asteroid rather than by a series of volcanic eruptions or some other global calamity has been the leading hypothesis since the 1980s, when scientists found asteroid dust in the geologic layer that marks the extinction of the dinosaurs. This discovery painted an apocalyptic picture of dust from the vaporized asteroid and rocks from impact circling the planet, blocking ...
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Politicization of the COVID-19 pandemic had a powerful influence over adherence to social distancing guidelines in the United States and why people did, or did not, comply during the lockdown days, a new study has found.
The analysis boiled down to whom study participants trusted most: scientists or President Donald Trump.
"People who expressed a great deal of faith in President Trump, who thought he was doing an effective job of guiding us through the pandemic, were less likely to socially distance," said Russell Fazio, senior author of the study and a professor ...
Ultra-fast, cheap LAMP-based COVID tests could be performed by non-experts at work and in public spaces, giving results in under an hour
INFORMATION:
Article Title: "Ultra-rapid detection of SARS-CoV-2 in public workspace environments"
Funding: This project was made possible through the support of a grant from Dynamic Combinatorial Chemistry, LLC, The funder provided support in the form of salaries and supplies for authors OY, ZY, JM, and BO, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific ...
Improving road safety in cities could result in a lower rate of violent crime, according to research from UCL.
Experts analysing crime and car accident data in Mexico City found a surprisingly high level of synchronicity between the two on a weekly cycle, suggesting that applying more resources to prevent road accidents would improve crime rates by enabling more efficient policing.
For the paper, published today in Cities as Complex Systems special issue in PLOS ONE, experts plotted the time and locations of nearly one million car accidents and 200,000 ...
CLEVELAND, Ohio - Researchers at University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital (UH Rainbow) published new findings today that wearing a face mask - either a cloth mask or a surgical mask - did not impair the ability of subjects to get air in and out of their bodies.
The study measured heart rate, transcutaneous carbon dioxide tension, and oxygen levels in 50 adult volunteers at the conclusion of six 10-minute phases: Sitting quietly and then walking briskly without a mask; sitting quietly and then walking briskly while wearing a cloth mask; and sitting quietly and then walking ...
WATERTOWN, Mass. - Gene therapy has traditionally been conceptualized as a one-time, curative treatment option; however, research shows that there may be a need for subsequent doses years after initial treatment. While adeno-associated viral (AAV) vectors are a core part of this powerful therapeutic approach, they present two key challenges in gene therapy.
The first challenge is their immunogenicity. In gene therapy, the formation of neutralizing antibodies (Nabs) in response to AAV vector administration precludes retreatment of a patient due to the potentially dangerous immune response that would occur after a second or third administration of the therapy.
The second obstacle relates to their durability. AAV vectors ...
A new study published Feb. 24 in the journal Royal Society Open Science documents the earliest-known fossil evidence of primates.
A team of 10 researchers from across the U.S. analyzed several fossils of Purgatorius, the oldest genus in a group of the earliest-known primates called plesiadapiforms. These ancient mammals were small-bodied and ate specialized diets of insects and fruits that varied by species. These newly described specimens are central to understanding primate ancestry and paint a picture of how life on land recovered after the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago that wiped out all dinosaurs -- except for birds -- and led to the rise of mammals.
Gregory Wilson Mantilla, a University of Washington professor of biology and curator of vertebrate ...
A research team from Skoltech and FBK (Italy) presented a methodology to derive 4D building models using historical maps and machine learning. The implemented method relies on the geometric, neighbourhood, and categorical attributes to predict building heights. The method is useful for understanding urban phenomena and changes contributing to defining our cities' actual shapes. The results were published in the MDPI Applied Sciences journal.
Historical maps are the most powerful source used to analyze changes in urban development. Nevertheless, maps represent the 3D world ...
Freshwater is accumulating in the Arctic Ocean. The Beaufort Sea, which is the largest Arctic Ocean freshwater reservoir, has increased its freshwater content by 40% over the past two decades. How and where this water will flow into the Atlantic Ocean is important for local and global ocean conditions.
A study from the University of Washington, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows that this freshwater travels through the Canadian Archipelago to reach the Labrador Sea, rather than through the wider marine passageways that connect to seas in Northern Europe. The open-access study was published Feb. 23 ...
Emerging smart mobile health (or mHealth) technologies are changing the way patients track information related to diagnosed conditions. A new study examined the health and economic impacts of mHealth technologies on the outcomes of diabetes patients in Asia. The study concluded that compared to patients who did not use mHealth applications, patients who used the apps had better health outcomes and were able to regulate their health behavior more effectively. They also had fewer hospital visits and lower medical costs.
The study was conducted by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and New York University ...
