Volume 24 Issue 11, November 2018

The microbiome may have an influence on addiction

A long-neglected virus returns to the top of researchers’ to-do lists.

Mutationally activated BRAF-V600E influences the behavior of different types of cells in the brain and leads to promotion of seizures as well as brain tumors, indicating how both can be pharmacologically targeted in the clinic.

Stratifying tuberculosis (TB) disease into minimal, moderate or severe disease may allow treatment duration to be tailored to disease severity. Minimal poor adherence is associated with poor treatment outcomes.

Reinforcement learning is applied to two large databases of electronic health records for patients admitted to an intensive care unit to identify individualized treatment strategies for correcting hypotension in sepsis.

In humans, niche-specific gastrointestinal microbiomes influence the colonization success of probiotic microbes. Microbiome reconstitution following antimicrobial perturbation is most successful using preperturbation autofecal microbial transplant.

A neoadjuvant approach using combined anti-CTLA4/anti-PD1 treatment prior to lymph node surgery is evaluated in two phase I trials of later stage melanoma finding this a therapeutic angle worth pursuing.

Neoadjuvant combination treatment with nivolumab and ipilimumab in patients with high-risk melanoma results in higher response rates than nivolumab monotherapy and warrants future optimization of dosing regimens to preserve efficacy while limiting toxicity.

Neoadjuvant combination immunotherapy in patients with advanced melanoma shows favorable activity over adjuvant treatment and warrants future evaluation with modified dosing schedules to reduce treatment-related adverse events.

In pediatric brain tumors that are accompanied by epileptic seizures, the BRAF somatic mutation V600E contributes to intrinsic epileptic properties in neurons, which can be suppressed by vemurafenib in mice.

Intracortical activity data recorded over 2 years in a tetraplegic patient is used to develop an artificial intelligence algorithm that achieves fast, accurate, and stable movement decoding to reenable real-time control of the paralyzed forearm.

In a human subject with chronic paraplegia, a combination of epidural electrical stimulation and long-term rehabilitative training have culminated in the first report of unassisted, voluntary independent stepping in a paralyzed individual.

In vivo tracking of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells in humans treated with lentiviral gene therapy unveils the resilience of hematopoietic stem cells and the long-term survival of lymphoid-biased precursors.

Mitochondrially targeted zinc-finger nucleases reduce mutational burden and correct biochemical defects in a mouse model of mitochondrial disease.

Mitochondrial-targeted TALENs reduce mutation burden and correct biochemical defects in a mouse model of mitochondrial disease.

Combination of two broadly neutralizing antibodies is effective in reducing HIV-1 viremia and in limiting the emergence of resistant viral variants in individuals harboring antibody-sensitive viruses.

Analysis of tuberculosis drug trials identifies features to stratify patients for longer or shorter treatment duration than the standard of care, in order to improve therapeutic outcomes.

A reinforcement learning agent, the AI Clinician, can assist physicians by providing individualized and clinically interpretable treatment decisions to improve patient outcomes.

Kidney compartment–specific eQTL analysis goes beyond GWAS to reveal causal genes and pathways involved in renal disease development.

Targeting different aspects of mutant CFTR structural defects with combination therapy leads to more potent rescue of function than that following single therapy.

A novel orphan noncoding RNA species with tumor-specific expression across breast cancer subtypes promotes metastatic progression and holds potential for patient diagnosis.

A resource of preclinical pediatric brain tumor models with detailed molecular characterization provides a platform for the community to test novel therapeutic approaches.

A quantitative proteomic approach overcomes a major bottleneck in translational immunology, namely the identification of autologous and bacterial immunodominant major histocompatibility complex class II epitopes based on genomic sequences.