Reviews & Analysis

A new study provides a rationale for the use of poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitors to trigger irreparable DNA damage as a therapeutic approach in acute myeloid leukemia (AML). It also provides support for combining PARP inhibitors with agents that reduce HOXA9 protein levels.

Microbiota depletion promotes type 2 cytokine signaling and browning in white adipose tissue of mice.

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a devastating X-linked disease that is characterized by progressive muscle degeneration and caused by mutations in dystrophin. Dystrophin is critical for myofiber structural integrity, but a new study reveals an additional important role for this protein in muscle stem cells.

Toren Finkel reviews how metabolism and aging are connected, and highlights pathways that could be pharmacologically targeted to combat aging and age-related disease.

In this Perspective, the mechanisms by which proteostasis is coordinated within and between cells is discussed with an emphasis on how these mechanisms are deregulated upon aging.

In this Perspective, the current approaches to drug aging, and how new approaches may be developed in the future are discussed.

In this Review, Jan van Deursen and his colleagues discuss the recent progress in understanding the origin and identity of senescent cells in ageing and their contribution to age-related disease, in addition to discussing the potential for targeting these cells to counteract disease.

Neutralization breadth is thought to be an important feature of an effective vaccine against HIV-1. A study in one individual has now identified the specific viral variant that engaged the necessary antibody precursor, as well as the viral immunotypes that drove neutralization breadth, improving understanding of how to mimic this process with a vaccine.

Chronic pain affects millions of people worldwide. A new study presents a promising therapeutic strategy in which Toll-like receptor (TLR) 5 stimulation enables the analgesic compound, QX-314, to specifically enter and silence large fiber sensory neurons, which convey pain in the setting of injury.

Cancer cachexia leads to involuntary weight loss resulting from the atrophy of skeletal muscle and adipose tissues. Now, in metastatic mouse models of cancer, investigators reveal a cross talk pathway between bone and muscle that provides a new understanding of wasting in advanced cancers.

A new study using human pluripotent stem cell (hPSC)-derived human pancreatic organoids to model neoplastic transformation and cancer-derived human pancreatic tumor organoids for drug testing provides new personalized approaches to modeling and treating this malignancy.

Maite Huarte discusses our current understanding of the impact of long noncoding RNAs on tumor growth and progression, and how this knowledge might be translated into new therapeutic approaches.

The role of CD47—often expressed on tumor cells—as a 'don't eat me' signal that inhibits macrophage phagocytosis is well established. But new work reveals a major role for other immune cell types—T cells and dendritic cells—in the anti-tumor effects of therapeutic CD47 blockade.

During viral infections, antigen-presenting cells (APC) have traditionally been thought to recruit and activate CD4⁺ T cells by presenting fragments of viral proteins captured from the extracellular environment. A new study indicates that the material the APCs need to present is much closer: in fact, APCs need to make it themselves.

Several independent groups question the reliability of an antibody-based method that is used to isolate oogonial stem cells from the ovaries of adult humans, nonhuman primates and mice.

Depression is mechanistically not well understood. A new study investigates the expression of chromatin-remodeling complexes in a mouse model for depression and describes an epigenetic pathway that may explain why some individuals are more susceptible to stress-induced depression than others.

Kroemer and colleagues discuss evidence supporting the importance of immunosurveillance in natural and therapy-induced killing of breast tumors.

Kidney fibrosis is a main pathological component of chronic kidney disease. Two new studies pinpoint a partial epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition as a mechanism driving the development of kidney fibrosis, thus paving the way for novel treatments of fibrosis-associated diseases.

A new study identifies the RAS-MAPK pathway to be an Achilles' heel of EML4-ALK fusion-positive lung cancer and suggests that up-front combination therapy directed against both pathways can achieve sustained suppression of tumor growth.

Seven years after the launch of the Human Microbiome Project, we still lack sufficient tools to visualize the microbiome in a living host. A new study provides experimental tools to label and track live anaerobic bacteria in the microbial communities in the mouse gut and beyond.