For many years, a team of researchers at the University of Copenhagen have been focussing on developing a vaccine that can protect against the disease pregnancy malaria from which 220,000 people die every year. Now they have come a significant step closer to being able to introduce such a vaccine in the market. In a new study published in the scientific journal Clinical Infectious Diseases the vaccine has been subjected to so-called phase one clinical trial, and the results are uplifting:
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Stem cell study offers clues for optimizing bone marrow transplants and more
Bone marrow transplants, which involve transplanting healthy blood stem cells, offer the best treatment for many types of cancers, blood disorders and immune diseases. Even though 22,000 of these procedures are performed each year in the US, much remains to be understood about how they work.
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Researchers uncover new mechanism of gene regulation involved in tumor progression
Genes contain all the information needed for the functioning of cells, tissues, and organs in our body. Gene expression, meaning when and how are the genes being read and executed, is thoroughly regulated like an assembly line with several things happening one after another.
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Stopping cancer from recruiting immune system double agents
Cancerous tumors trick myeloid cells, an important part of the immune system, into perceiving them as a damaged part of the body; the tumors actually put myeloid cells to work helping them grow and metastasize (spread). A research team co-led by scientists at Rush University Medical Center have discovered a potential therapy that can disrupt this recruitment and abnormal function of myeloid cells in laboratory mice.
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Tumors backfire on chemotherapy
Some patients with breast cancer receive chemotherapy before the tumor is removed with surgery. This approach, called 'neoadjuvant' therapy, helps to reduce the size of the tumor to facilitate breast-conserving surgery, and can even eradicate the tumor, leaving few or no cancerous cells for the surgeon to remove. In those cases, the patients are very likely to remain cancer-free for life after surgery.
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Pediatric leukemia 'super drug' could be developed in the coming years
Northwestern Medicine scientists have discovered two successful therapies that slowed the progression of pediatric leukemia in mice, according to three studies published over the last two years in the journal Cell, and the final paper published Dec. 20 in Genes & Development. When a key protein responsible for leukemia, MLL, is stabilized, it slows the progression of the leukemia, the most recent study found.
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Sutimlimab shows promise for hard-to-treat, rare blood disorder
In a first-in-human clinical trial reported today in Blood, the investigational drug sutimlimab appeared to be effective in treating cold agglutinin disease, a rare chronic blood disorder for which there are currently no approved treatments. Cold agglutinin disease is caused by a malfunction in the immune system that causes antibodies - components of the immune system that are produced in the blood and help the body fight off disease - to mistakenly latch onto and kill red blood cells.
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