Volume 25 Issue 4, April 2019

Radical changes are afoot in medical schools.

Lars Zender is professor and chairman of internal medicine at University Hospital Tubingen in Germany. He has received many awards, including the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation.

It has been only recently that scientists come to realize the existence of a lymphatic system within the central nervous system. However, an Italian anatomist had already found and described the system in fine detail over 200 years ago.

Improved protocols for the visualization of immature neurons in the human brain provide evidence for generation of neurons in the adult hippocampus and uncover reduced neurogenesis in Alzheimer’s disease.

A large study provides causal evidence of the opposing effects of plasma low-density lipoprotein (LDL) levels on ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke in a Chinese population and suggests there is a a net benefit associated with LDL lowering.

A new drug restores a compromised intestinal barrier and ameliorates colitis in mice by modulating paracellular permeability through a newly discovered mechanism.

Broadly neutralizing antibodies have the potential to clear HIV and prevent further infection, as shown in emerging clinical studies.

Newborn neurons are continuously incorporated into the healthy adult human hippocampus up to the ninth decade of life. However, robust adult hippocampal neurogenesis sharply declines during the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.

iPSC-derived brain organoids from patients with neurodevelopmental disease reveal dysfunction in neural progenitors underlying impaired migration of developing neurons in periventricular heterotopia.

In a nested case-control study from the China Kadoorie Biobank, lowering blood low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels confers lower risk for ischemic stroke but elevated risk for intracerebral hemorrhage, which was confirmed by genetic Mendelian randomization analyses.

IL1R1 is a gatekeeper for celastrol’s metabolic actions.

Clinical insights from patients with a rare genetic skeletal disorder led to the discovery of the first case of a pathogenic gain-of-function miRNA mutation.

A longitudinal survey of maternal antiviral antibodies in newborns provides a blueprint for understanding infectious disease susceptibility and vaccine development, and inform vaccine scheduling in newborn children.

Rearrangements in MAP3K8 respond to MEK inhibition and represent the most common genetic driver in pediatric spitzoid melanoma, and in some adult melanomas lacking other MAPK alterations and for which clinical testing is warranted.

Post-transplantation relapse in acute myeloid leukemia patients without genomic loss of HLA is driven by transcriptional alterations in antigen presentation and T cell costimulation genes.

QPCTL is a modifier of CD47-SIRPα binding and its blockade enhances macrophage- and neutrophil-mediated antibody dependent cellular cytotoxicity towards tumor cells.

Targeted inhibition of RAF–MEK–ERK signaling induces autophagy through the LKB1–AMPK axis, creating a therapeutic vulnerability that can be exploited for treating patients with pancreatic cancer and potentially other RAS-mutant tumors.

Blockade of ERK signaling in KRAS-mutant pancreatic cancer increases the dependence on autophagic flux through different mechanisms and provides a rationale for combinatorial targeting with autophagy inhibitors.

Blockade of intrahepatic accumulation and function of platelets represents a potential approach to treat non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) and prevent subsequent progression to hepatocellular carcinoma

Blockade of sialic acid-binding protein Siglec-15 expressed in cancer and tumor-infiltrating myeloid cells reverses immunesupression and represents a novel target for cancer immunotherapy independent from the PD-1/PD-L1 axis.

Multicohort analysis identifies microbial signatures of colorectal cancer in fecal microbiomes.

Cross-study analysis defines fecal microbial species associated with colorectal cancer.

A small molecule that restores the integrity of the intestinal barrier provides a novel therapeutic strategy for inflammatory bowel diseases.