Researchers at VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center and the VCU Institute of Molecular Medicine (VIMM) were recently awarded a $1.8 million, 3-year grant from the United States Department of Defense (DoD) to study the implications of using a modified enhanced therapeutic version of melanoma differentiation associated gene-7/Interleukin-24, IL-24 ‘Superkine’ (IL-24S) delivered by immune (natural killer) cells to fight advanced prostate cancer.

This DoD Grant will allow the investigative teams of Drs. Paul B. Fisher and Swadesh K. Das to take the next step in IL-24S research, which has already shown remarkable efficacy when delivered by a therapeutic adenovirus against brain (glioblastoma) cancers, by delivery through enhanced engineered natural killer (NK) cells. IL-24S is a genetically engineered version of IL-24 that targets and kills cancer cells while sparing normal ones.

A team from the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences and the Institute of Neurosciences at the University of Barcelona (UBneuro) has applied advanced artificial intelligence techniques to better understand why Huntington’s disease can begin at very different ages in patients. This hereditary neurodegenerative condition, which causes motor, cognitive, and psychiatric impairments, is caused by a mutation in the HTT gene, which encodes the huntingtin protein.

Delivering therapies to the brain remains a major challenge due to the limited permeability of the blood-brain barrier. In a recent study published in Cell, researchers proposed a strategy to hijack skull-derived immune cells using drug-loaded nanoparticles, leveraging their unique migration mechanism through skull-meninges microchannels to bypass the blood-brain barrier. The team demonstrated efficient in situ construction of nanoparticle-loaded immune cells and their rapid migration to the disease site in response to CNS perturbations, enabling targeted delivery to brain lesions. In preclinical stroke models, this strategy achieved promising therapeutic efficacy in improving both short- and long-term outcomes. A prospective clinical trial further supports the translational feasibility of the calvarial immune access in treating malignant stroke. These findings establish a potentially clinically translatable platform for brain drug delivery.

A new University at Buffalo study examines what happens to discarded cigarette butts when released into the environment. Findings showing that one cigarette filter can release up to two dozen microfibers almost immediately upon contacting water. More than 100 additional microfibers may break free of the filter within 10 days depending on how the water is moving.

This quick release of cellulose acetate fibers – what most cigarette filters are made of – had not been precisely measured before. This builds upon the evidence that cigarette butts –the most littered item worldwide – are a direct and underestimated source of microplastic pollution.