Thanks to antiretroviral therapy, HIV infection is no longer the life sentence it once was. But despite the effectiveness of drugs to manage and treat the virus, it can never be fully eliminated from the human body, lingering in some cells deep in different human tissues where it goes unnoticed by the immune system. Now, new research by University of Alberta immunologist Shokrollah Elahi reveals a possible answer to the mystery of why infected people can’t get rid of HIV altogether. Elahi and his team found that in HIV patients, killer T cells — a type of white blood cells responsible for identifying and destroying cells infected with viruses — have very little to none of a protein called CD73. Because CD73 is responsible for migration and cell movement into the tissue, the lack of the protein compromises the ability of killer T cells to find and eliminate HIV-infected cells, explained Elahi.

Scientists have now created a powerful new method for generating protein drugs. Using computers, they designed molecules that can target important proteins in the body, such as the insulin receptor, as well as vulnerable proteins on the surface of viruses. This solves a long-standing challenge in drug development and may lead to new treatments for cancer, diabetes, infection, inflammation, and beyond.

Researchers have discovered another way tumor cells transfer genetic material to other cells in their microenvironment, causing cancer to spread.

The A2A receptor regulates how vigorously the innate immune system attacks diseased cells. Researchers have now been able to show for the first time how an important inhibitor binds to the receptor. In the future, the results will facilitate the targeted search for molecules that give the innate immune system more punch. These could for instance be used in the fight against cancer, but also against brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease.

Half of all women experience a false positive mammogram after 10 years of annual breast cancer screening with 3D mammography, a UC Davis-led study estimates. This risk was lower for women who had mammograms every other year. 3D screening showed slightly lower false positive results than standard mammography.

Treatment for glioma has long relied on MRI imaging to track tumor markers and treatment response. But new findings suggest a new method could provide additional data about tumor markers before changes appear on an MRI, indicating possible strategies to help clinicians address this aggressive form of cancer.

Researchers have developed a novel method to identify aggressive early-stage lung cancers and target drugs known as aurora kinase inhibitors to tumors that are especially likely to respond to them. The findings could lead to great advances in treatment for lung adenocarcinoma, the most common type of lung cancer.

Artificial sweeteners reduce added sugar content and corresponding calories while maintaining sweetness. A new study suggests that some artificial sweeteners are associated with increased cancer risk.

Researchers found that the cells of humans and animals who have recovered from tuberculosis had prematurely aged up to 12 to 14 years. It’s possible that this premature cellular aging is one reason why survivors of tuberculosis have a high risk of mortality.

Researchers have developed an implantable biotechnology that produces and releases CAR-T cells for attacking cancerous tumors. In a proof-of-concept study involving lymphoma in mice, the researchers found that treatment with the implants was faster and more effective than conventional CAR-T cell cancer treatment.

Pancreatic cancer is notoriously difficult to cure or even treat. Now, a new strategy has succeeded in making pancreatic tumors visible to the immune systems of mice and vulnerable to immune attack, reducing cancer metastases by 87%.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved a novel therapy for patients with metastatic or inoperable melanoma, an aggressive type of skin cancer.

Invading armies need a steady supply of fuel and armaments. That’s just as true when the invaders are cells, such as when tumor cells break away and spread to other parts of the body in a process called metastasis — the most deadly part of cancer. Now, a study in C. elegans worms provides new insight into how invading cells deploy fuel to the front lines of invasion to power their break-through machinery.

The findings of a new study suggest that a ketogenic diet — which is low in carbohydrates and protein, but high in fat — helps to kill pancreatic cancer cells when combined with a triple-drug therapy. In laboratory experiments, the ketogenic diet decreased glucose (sugar) levels in the tumor, suggesting the diet helped starve the cancer. In addition, this diet elevated ketone bodies produced by the liver, which put additional stress on the cancer cells.

Scientists have identified variants in two genes that are associated with accelerated aging in childhood cancer survivors.

Just one dose of a new nanoparticle-based COVID-19 vaccine was enough to produce an immune response in animals on track with vaccines currently in clinical use. And with minor changes, researchers hope the same vaccine platform could target other infectious diseases.

The appearance of ovarian lesions on ultrasound is an effective predictor of cancer risk that can help women avoid unnecessary surgery, according to a new study.

A new computational approach successfully combines data from parallel gene-expression profiling methods to create spatial maps of a given tissue at single-cell resolution. The resulting maps can provide unique biological insights into the cancer microenvironment and many other tissue types.

A new form of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) that makes cancerous tissue glow in medical images could help doctors more accurately detect and track the progression of cancer over time.

A researcher has found, through extensive data analysis, that the youngest patients with brain tumors — those ages birth to 3 months — have about half the five-year survival rate as children ages 1 to 19.

New research finds that patients with ASXL1-mutant chronic myelomonocytic leukemia — an uncommon type of cancer of the bone marrow — have distinctive epigenetic changes that can activate harmful genes and cause the cancer to grow faster. The ASXL1 genetic mutation also can transform the disease into the more aggressive acute myeloid leukemia.

Researchers have described application of a pioneering chemical technique which could unlock ground-breaking new treatments for cancer and other diseases.

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. However, why premenopausal women are more resistant to NAFLD than men is currently unknown. Now, scientists demonstrate, through sex-balanced experiments on mice, that the female liver produces higher levels of a protein that has a protective effect against NAFLD. Their findings could lead to new therapeutic strategies for treating NAFLD.

An artificial intelligence (AI) tool can accurately and consistently classify breast density on mammograms, according to a new study.

Metastases in cancer are often caused by a few abnormal cells. These behave more aggressively than the other cancer cells in a tumor. Researchers are now on a method to detect these cells.