Companies are now working to bring modified versions of IL-2 to market to treat cancer, combining this cytokine with checkpoint inhibitors. These companies are well funded, and the diversity of approach, with at least three distinct strategies, offers hope that more than one improved IL-2 drug may eventually be approved.
Not all scientists are aware of the difference between serum and plasma. So, let’s explain. As well as red and white blood cells and nutrients, blood contains fibrinogen and blood clotting factors which cause clotting when blood is exposed to air. This clotting is important to prevent excessive bleeding following injury. The action of these clotting components can be stopped using anti-coagulants and this prevents any clots forming.
Microcarrier-based biomanufacturing has become well established and now represents a large market across all scales of production. Bioreactors on offer which can use microcarriers range from lab sized, with a few liters of capacity, to factory sized, at hundreds or thousands of liters.
A new wave of innovation is leading to the development of a 2nd generation of ever-more complex organoids, known as assembloids, that will enable more powerful studies to be conducted within the confines of a culture dish allowing greater insights and reducing our reliance on animal models.
Cochlear implants can help restore hearing, but without functional sensory ganglion neurons to integrate the implant with the brain, their performance is limited. At present, there are no approved medications specifically targeting sensory recovery.
It is accepted wisdom that the visual sense is the dominant of the five senses for us humans. A notion that also has translated into sensory research. Or as the author of a paper in 2019 asked “Why Is There So Much More Research on Vision Than on Any Other Sensory Modality?†in which he observed that more textbook and journal article inches are spent on vision than on any other sensory modality across multiple disciplines ranging from biomedical sciences to perception and cognitive psychology.
Exosomes are proving highly versatile. Researchers are aiming to exploit their considerable talents for therapeutic cargo delivery to create a new class of drugs. Perhaps most exciting is their potential to enable an emerging spectrum of RNA-based therapies.
Chemotherapy, using chemicals that are particularly toxic to rapidly dividing cancer cells, is the most commonly used cancer treatment, often in combination with surgery and/or radiotherapy. However, the side effects of chemotherapy are severe. Exosomes may offer a way of better targeting chemotherapy to cancer cells.
Biological discovery and crisis can both give rise to entirely new fields of study. In this article, we assess the impact of Covid on research output in 2020 and the rise of technologies such as CRISPR and cell reprogramming that have shaped the last 20 years.
Many cancers have developed an efficient way of blocking the body’s natural immune response by overexpressing a protein called programmed death ligand-1 (PD-L1). Antibodies that neutralize PD-L1 are highly effective in some patients. Exosome-based diagnostics can predict responders.
