Volume 25 Issue 5, May 2019

Ami Bhatt is a physician-scientist and assistant professor of medicine and genetics at Stanford University. Her research deploys next-generation sequencing to explore host–microbiome interactions, including those in cancer.

Max Nieuwdorp is an internist, endocrinologist and vascular medicine specialist at Amsterdam University Medical Centers. He chairs the Diabetes Center there and is chief of the Department and Laboratory of Vascular Medicine.

Three innovative precision medicine studies show the utility of evidence beyond that from tumor DNA sequencing to guide therapy in patients with cancer.

Multi-omics longitudinal profiling of individuals can detect subtle changes in health status at the earliest possible time point, allowing preemptive initiation of mechanism-appropriate disease-prevention strategies.

Human survivors of Ebola virus disease are more likely than uninfected controls to develop memory loss, uveitis, and other abnormal conditions, and Ebola virus remains in semen much longer than previously thought.

The use and promotion of probiotics is widespread, but debatable in many cases. Prospective large-scale randomized studies that assess their effectiveness in promoting health and curing disease and take into account personalized responses of discrete human subpopulations will help clarify specific indications in which probiotics may be safe and beneficial.

Clinical use of engineered bacteriophages for the treatment of disseminated mycobacterial infection.

Mass cytometry identifies a unique phenotype enriched in CD4⁺ T cells isolated from autoimmune disease patients.

Sequencing of circulating tumor DNA from cancer patients is a cost-efficient approach with turnaround time compatible with clinical practice to inform treatment decision-making in a phase 1 trial setting

A prospective clinical study of cancer patients (I-PREDICT) demonstrated the feasibility of matching genomic alterations found in tumors to combined drug treatments.

Prospective analysis of transcriptomic and genomic alterations increases the proportion of patients with solid cancer who are eligible for receiving matched therapies and shows promise in improving clinical outcomes.

GITR agonism can be exploited in combination with checkpoint blockade to overcome immune refractoriness in solid tumors.

Fusion proteins in cancers with low mutational burden represent functional neoantigens that elicit T cell activation and mediate responses to immunotherapy.

Optimized conditions for ribonucleoprotein delivery of Cas9–sgRNA complexes enables precise and efficient gene editing to restore fetal hemoglobin expression in sickle cell disease patient-derived HSCs

Brain organoids derived from human iPSCs are used to study the effects of hypoxia on early cortical neurodevelopment and identify defects in specific human progenitor populations that likely contribute to encephalopathy of prematurity.

Personalized omics profiling can lead to actionable health discoveries and stimulate lifestyle changes.

A robust signature of circulating inflammatory proteins is causally associated with 10-year risk of progression to end-stage renal disease in diabetic patients

In situ vaccine recruits and activates cross-presenting dendritic cells and augments PD1 blockade efficacy in patients with indolent non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Elevated activity of the methionine cycle is essential for cancer stem cell tumorigenesis and represents a therapeutic vulnerability.

A biobank of ovarian cancer organoids recapitulates the histopathological and molecular hallmarks of patient tumors and provides a resource for preclinical research.

Systematic metabolite profiling across cancer cell lines uncovers patterns associated with genetic and epigenetic features and reveals dysregulated metabolic states that can be exploited for anticancer therapy