Category Biology/Biotechnology

Highlights •atRA deficiency in colon cancer is driven by microbiota-induced inflammation •Treatment with atRA reduces tumorigenesis by enhancing a CD8+ T cell response •The enhanced CD8+ T cell response is due to upregulation of MHCI on tumor cells •CD8+ T cell cytotoxicity in human colon cancer correlates with local atRA metabolism

Mice with the cancer have lower-than-normal levels of the metabolite in their gut. Furthermore, colorectal cancer patients whose intestinal tissues express high levels of a protein that degrades retinoic acid tend to fare more poorly than their peers. The research is the first to unravel a complicated dance between retinoic acid levels, immune-related inflammation and gut microorganisms...

The source of alcohol craving may be a pea-sized structure deep inside the right side of the brain. The brain scans showed that the beer flavor induced more activity in both frontal lobes and in the right ventral striatum of the subjects’ brains than did the sports drink. Credit: B. Oberlin and D. Kareken, Indiana University School of Medicine

If you really want a drink right now, the source of your craving may be a pea-sized structure deep inside the right side of your brain, according to scientists at the Indiana University School of Medicine. Using PET and fMRI, the researchers compared the results of giving beer drinkers a taste of their favorite beer versus a sports drink...

Lambert, Lucia and Gari (left to right) unpack the mechanism of investigational drug, AMPI-109, to show how its inactivation of PRL-3 flips an important switch on triple-negative breast cancer.

A new study offers compelling evidence that enzyme PRL-3 is ‘switch’ in TNF-R1 pathway, determining whether pathway helps cancer cells survive or die when challenged with immunotherapy. Previous studies at the University of Colorado Cancer Center show that the experimental drug AMPI-109 potently kills triple-negative breast cancer cells. But even the most compelling evidence of cell death in a dish isn’t enough to push a drug into human clinical trials, even for triple-negative breast cancer, which has a high mortality rate and remains largely without targeted treatment options...

The hallmark of an adaptive immune system is the ability of T-cells to recognise foreign substances, that are potentially harmful (Photo: Shutterstock)

In the past it was was largely assumed that “all receptors were equal.” as in George Orwell’s Animal Farm where the barnyard devolves into chaos, and the slogan “all animals are equal” becomes “all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.” Using powerful imaging technology and some of Australia’s only super-resolution microscopes that can zoom in to the level of a single molecule, UNSW researchers have viewed this critical first-stage in the immune response, inside a single functional T-cell, in unprecedented detail.

UNSW Scientia Professor Katharina Gaus said: “Although all receptors in a single T-cell are genetically...