An international group of noise experts from the Copenhagen Cancer Institute (Denmark), the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH), the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Philadelphia (USA) and the Department of Cardiology at the Mainz University Medical Center have analyzed recent epidemiological data and found strong evidence that transportation noise is closely linked to cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease. As a result, the researchers call for traffic noise to be recognized as a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. The results of their analyses were published today in the renowned journal of the American Heart Association, Circulation Research.

DKMS emphasizes its commitment to blood cancer research, supports young scientists, and recognizes outstanding research achievements in the field of stem cell transplantation.

The transition from the esophagus to the stomach is a delicate region from a medical point of view, often associated with pathological disorders leading to cancer. An international research team has now gained new insights into this region. These pave the way for new prevention and treatment options.

Short-term cultivated, individualised immune cells (CAR T cells) are currently being developed as a therapeutic option for patients with blood cancer. A research team from the Paul-Ehrlich-Institut has shown with mouse and cell models that these cells carry a higher risk for cytokine release syndrome than conventional CAR T cells. The cytokine release is caused by residual components of vector particles on the CAR T cells and is independent of tumour cells. Careful consideration of the safety of this innovative treatment is required to minimise risks to patients. EMBO Molecular Medicine reports on the results in its issue dated 21 March 2024.

Krebs-Therapien mit so genannten „Immuncheckpoint-Inhibitoren“ (ICI) sind inzwischen weit verbreitet, doch ihre Langzeitwirkungen noch kaum erfasst. Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler aus dem Deutschen Krebsforschungszentrum (DKFZ) haben nun
erstmals systematisch Studien zu den Langzeitfolgen dieser Therapien zusammengefasst. Ein signifikanter Anteil der Cancer Survivor berichtet über eingeschränkte Lebensqualität und unerwünschte Nebenwirkungen der Therapie. Allerdings sei noch wesentlich detaillierteres Wissen über die Langzeiteffekte der ICI erforderlich, betonen die Forschenden, um den Betroffenen die bestmögliche Nachsorge zu bieten.

Raucher:innen und Konsument:innen von E-Zigaretten teilen nicht nur eine Gewohnheit, sondern auch ähnliche, mit Krebs assoziierte Veränderungen an Zellen, so eine neue Studie von Wissenschaftler:innen der Universität Innsbruck und dem University College London (UCL), veröffentlicht in der Fachzeitschrift Cancer Research.

Epigenetic changes play important roles in cancer, metabolic and aging-related diseases, but also during loss of resilience as they cause the genetic material to be incorrectly interpreted in affected cells. A major study by scientists at Helmholtz Munich published in ’Nature’ now provides important new insights into how complex epigenetic modification signatures regulate the genome. This study will pave the way for new treatments of diseases caused by faulty epigenetic machineries.

The waste system of living cells, the proteasome, not only shreds disused or damaged proteins. It also supports the immune system in recognizing virally infected or cancerous cells by producing protein fragments, so-called immunopeptides. In an international collaboration, researchers led by Juliane Liepe at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Multidisciplinary Sciences have now simulated protein degradation by the proteasome in the laboratory and identified and quantified the peptides thereby produced. In future, the resulting data set could help predict immunopeptides and develop new vaccines against infectious diseases or cancer.

Mehr als 2.000 Kinder und Jugendliche in Deutschland erkranken jährlich an Krebs. Wenn ein Kind oder ein Elternteil die Diagnose Krebs erhält, hat dies Auswirkungen auf das gesamte Familienleben. Das Universitäre Cancer Center Hamburg (UCCH) des Universitätsklinikums Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) hat daher eine psychosoziale Beratungsstelle für an Krebs erkrankte Kinder, Jugendliche und junge Erwachsene sowie deren Familien eingerichtet. Anlässlich des Internationalen Kinderkrebstags am 15. Februar informiert Priv.-Doz. Dr. Gabriele Escherich, Oberärztin in der Klinik für Pädiatrische Hämatologie und Onkologie des UKE, über das neu geschaffene Angebot.

Scientists from University Hospital Cologne have developed a procedure in the laboratory that effectively fights the affected cells in lymphoma cancer, but does not damage healthy immune cells, which is often the case with comparable therapies / publication in ‘Cell Reports Medicine’

Researchers at the BioMed X Institute and the Universitätsmedizin Mannheim just published the results of their collaboration around a new neoepitope vaccine in diffuse midline glioma in Science Advances.

A precursor of cholesterol, previously categorised as harmful, can protect cancer cells from cell death. This finding, published in Nature, opens new doors for cancer research.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women. The development of breast cancer often originates from epithelial cells in the mammary gland – the very cells that specialise in milk production during and after pregnancy. A team of researchers from Friedrich Schiller University Jena (Germany), the university in Shenzhen (China) and Jena University Hospital (Germany) has taken a closer look at this specialisation process and deciphered a molecular mechanism that also appears to play an important role in cancer development. It may be possible to develop new diagnostic procedures and treatment methods for breast cancer based on these research findings.

Researchers develop novel cancer protein killer and discover a new ligase for PROTACs

Researchers from Göttingen and Karlsruhe have developed a new treatment approach for pancreatic cancer. The innovative method promises to be able to treat the disease in a more targeted way and with fewer side effects in the future. The therapy is now to be optimized for clinical application as quickly as possible.

Scientists have discovered in animal experiments that breast cancer cells heavily rely on vitamin B5 to grow and survive / Publication in ‘Nature Metabolism‘

MYC proteins play an important role in many types of cancer. A research team at the University of Würzburg has now succeeded in indirectly influencing these proteins – with clear consequences for the tumor.

Cancer cells are notorious for rapidly changing their phenotype, driving within-host spread and evading treatment. Scientists in Plön used a mathematical model to understand the role of a signal used by cancer cells to control their phenotype. By manipulating these signals, cancer cells can be tricked into a less harmful phenotype that is more responsive to treatments.

When a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer, the difficult question arises as to which type of treatment is the right one. Gene expression testing is one of the methods used by doctors to help make a prognosis about the course of the disease and, based on this, to select a suitable therapy. However, the reliability of these tests has not been fully established. Scientists from Leipzig University and the Pathologie Hamburg-West institute have now used machine learning to analyse large amounts of data on this question and found that gene expression signatures offer a high degree of certainty in prognosis, but not complete certainty.

Researchers at Helmholtz Munich and the Technical University of Munich have made significant progress in advancing high-resolution optoacoustic imaging for clinical use. Their innovative deep-learning framework, known as DeepMB, holds great promise for patients dealing with a range of illnesses, including breast cancer, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and inflammatory bowel disease. Their findings have been now published in Nature Machine Intelligence.

Dynamic resilience, the ability of humans to withstand unexpected changes and stressors, is pivotal for maintaining bodily functions and overall health. Aging adults and especially women after menopause are at higher risk of adverse health outcomes (including frailty) in response to external stress situations such as cancer therapies or infections due to reduced dynamic resilience. Addressing the impact of female menopause on dynamic resilience and exploring preventive and therapeutic strategies is the aim of an international and interdisciplinary research group led by Prof. Dr. Peter Loskill from the NMI Natural and Medical Sciences Institute and the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen.

– Cells are stimulated by robots measuring just 30 micrometers (µm)
– Technological platform developed to produce microrobots
– Ion channel mechanisms can be influenced

A group of researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has developed the world’s first microrobot (“microbot”) capable of navigating within groups of cells and stimulating individual cells. Berna Özkale Edelmann, a professor of Nano- and Microrobotics, sees potential for new treatments of human diseases.

Our cells have a fleet of 300 molecular machines, called cullin-RING ligases, or „CRLs“ for short, that each is capable of triggering destruction of specific proteins for the well-being of our cells. However, most proteins are needed, therefore only those that block newly required cellular paths or that are toxic should be destroyed. The destructive potential of CRLs is tightly controlled. CRLs are switched on only temporarily, when needed. Researchers at MPI of Biochemistry and University of Waterloo have developed a new way to detect those CRLs in the fleet that are „on”, which reveals the CRLs deployed to solve cellular stresses and to perform the actions of some anti-cancer drugs.

Colorectal cancer (CRC) ranks second in leading causes of cancer-related deaths globally, according to the WHO. For the first time, researchers from Helmholtz Munich and the University of Technology Dresden (TU Dresden) show that artificial intelligence (AI)-based predictions can deliver comparable results to clinical tests on biopsies of patients with CRC. AI predictions can speed up the analysis of tissue samples, resulting in faster treatment decisions. This novel model for biomarker detection represents a significant stride towards the realization of precision therapy approaches in the field of oncology. The method is now published in Cancer Cell.

The computational design of new proteins for biomedical or other applications involves long computing times on powerful servers. A joint team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Biology Tübingen and the University Hospital Tübingen has now developed and tested a new computational method to greatly speed up the necessary energy calculations. Their framework, now published in the journal Cell Reports Methods, allows for a precise and efficient design of functional proteins. Evidencing the usefulness of their findings, the researchers developed two classes of proteins which can be deployed in cancer diagnostics and treatment.