Molecular Awards

  One stem cell generates 14 million tumor-killing natural killer (NK) cells in major cancer breakthrough. Scientists in China have unveiled a breakthrough way to mass-produce powerful cancer-fighting immune cells in the lab. By engineering early-stage stem cells from cord blood—rather than trying to modify mature natural killer (NK) cells—they created a streamlined process that generates enormous numbers of highly potent NK cells, including CAR-equipped versions designed to hunt specific cancers. NK cells play a critical role in the body’s early defense against viruses and cancer, along with other immune functions. Because of their natural ability to detect and destroy abnormal cells, they are an attractive tool for cancer treatment. In chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-NK therapy, scientists equip NK cells with a lab-designed receptor (a CAR) so they can recognize a specific marker on cancer cells and attack them more precisely. Traditional CAR-NK approaches usually depend on matur...

  Viral infectious diseases have caused millions of deaths worldwide. Antiviral agents are critical for controlling these infections; however, an open-access database dedicated specifically to antiviral agents remains unavailable. Here, we present AntiviralDB  an expert-curated resource that compiles both approved and experimental antiviral agents with laboratory-confirmed   in vitro   activity against a broad spectrum of human viruses. These include the human immunodeficiency virus, coronaviruses, hepatitis viruses, influenza virus, respiratory syncytial virus, herpes simplex virus, varicella-zoster virus, human cytomegalovirus, human papillomavirus, dengue virus, Zika virus, Ebola virus, mpox virus, norovirus, chikungunya virus, and 16 other common or life-threatening pathogens. Each antiviral agent in the database is annotated with key information, including its molecular target,   in vitro   antiviral activity (IC 50 , EC 50 , and CC 50   across sp...

  Chromothripsis is also surprisingly common. Studies suggest that about one in four cancers shows signs of this type of chromosome damage, and in some cancers the rate is even higher. Nearly all osteosarcomas, an aggressive bone cancer, display evidence of chromothripsis, and many brain cancers show especially elevated levels. "This discovery finally reveals the molecular 'spark' that ignites one of the most aggressive forms of genome rearrangement in cancer," said senior author Don Cleveland, Ph.D., professor of cellular and molecular medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine and member of UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center. "By finding what breaks the chromosome in the first place, we now have a new and actionable point of intervention for slowing cancer evolution." Chromothripsis begins when errors during cell division trap individual chromosomes inside small, fragile compartments known as micronuclei. When a micronucleus ruptures, the chromosome inside...

  Three years ago, Portnoy cofounded a startup, Laguna Biotherapeutics, that worked with scientists in his University of California, Berkeley lab to eliminate the bacteria's ability to cause disease while retaining its ability to rev up production of a type of immune system cell associated with increased survival in cancer patients. These so-called  gamma delta T cells  are general-purpose killers of cancer cells or any cell infected by a pathogen—bacteria, virus, or fungus. Laguna Bio will soon ask the FDA for clearance to evaluate the therapy in children with leukemia who have received unmatched bone marrow transplants. Stanford University Medical Center doctors hope that the engineered Listeria will boost gamma delta T cells in pediatric patients and help them stave off graft-versus-host disease, fight potentially deadly infections that take advantage of a transplant patient's compromised immune system, and prevent the cancer from returning. Portnoy and his colleagues ...

  Scientists have uncovered new DNA-binding proteins from some of the most extreme environments on Earth and shown that they can improve rapid medical tests for infectious diseases. The work has been published in  Nucleic Acids Research . The international research team, led by Durham University and working with partners in Iceland, Norway and Poland, analyzed genetic material from Icelandic volcanic lakes and deep-sea vents more than two kilometers below the surface of the North Atlantic Ocean. Nature is the world's largest source of useful enzymes, but many remain undiscovered. By using next-generation DNA sequencing, the researchers were able to search huge databases containing millions of potential proteins. This approach allowed them to identify previously unknown proteins that bind to single-stranded DNA and remain stable under harsh conditions such as high temperatures, extreme pH or high salt levels. The newly discovered proteins were carefully studied using a range of...

  A new computational model of the brain based closely on its biology and physiology not only learned a simple visual category learning task exactly as well as lab animals, but even enabled the discovery of counterintuitive activity by a group of neurons that researchers working with animals to perform the same task had not noticed in their data before, says a team of scientists at Dartmouth College, MIT, and the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Notably, the model produced these achievements without ever being trained on any data from animal experiments. Instead, it was built from scratch to faithfully represent how neurons connect into circuits and then communicate electrically and chemically across broader brain regions to produce cognition and behavior. Then, when the research team asked the model to perform the same task that they had previously performed with the animals (looking at patterns of dots and deciding which of two broader categories they fit), it produce...