The Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre supported by the ”la Caixa” Foundation, has launched HTGAnalyzer, a new, easy-to-use, fast and reproducible bioinformatics tool for advanced transcriptomic data analysis. Designed within the R statistical environment, this package simplifies complex analytical processes, making them accessible to professionals without specific expertise in bioinformatics.

The growing healthcare burden posed by hepatocellular carcinoma, the most common subtype of liver cancer, has prompted the establishment of a Commission comprising a wide range of medical and public health experts. Now, they present their findings in a recent report, which defines concrete goals for the reduction of hepatocellular carcinoma cases, and presents a set of evidence-based recommendations to help stakeholders work together to achieve these goals.

Anti-N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) encephalitis is a rare autoimmune brain disease that mainly affects young people. Researchers from China reviewed a wide range of biomarkers that may help detect, understand, and treat this condition more effectively. These include antibodies, inflammatory markers, microRNAs, mitochondrial DNA, and neurofilament light chain proteins. Their findings highlight how biomarkers can guide diagnosis and treatment decisions, offering new insights into the disease’s underlying mechanisms and improving care for affected individuals.

Professor Xun Lan from the School of Basic Medical Sciences at Tsinghua University and Director Hongxing Liu from Hebei Yanda Lu Daopei Hospital have published a research article entitled “Integrative scATAC-seq and mtDNA mutation analysis reveals disease-driven regulatory aberrations in AML” in Science Bulletin. This study leverages single-cell multi-omics technologies to investigate the regulatory aberrations caused by mutations in the transcription factor WT1 and in cis-regulatory elements that drive acute myeloid leukemia (AML). The research also uncovers tumor clones and relapse-associated markers linked to AML relapse, offering new insights into the mechanisms of disease progression and potential avenues for therapeutic intervention.

A new type of tissue-engineered cardiac patch could not only seal defective areas of the heart, as has been the case up to now, but also heal them. An interdisciplinary team led by ETH Zurich has successfully implanted the patch in animals.