wire - news in brief

A study from IOR, affiliated to USI, published in the journal Haematologica. explores the potent anti-cancer activity of loncastuximab tesirine, an antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) targeting CD19-positive B cell lymphomas. The research, led by Dr Chiara Tarantelli (IOR Senior Investigator) and Prof. Francesco Bertoni (IOR Group Leader and Deputy Director, USI Adjunct Professor), involves a collaborative effort from prominent institutions, including Case Western Reserve University, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, and Weill Cornell Medicine, among others.

The close collaboration between the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI and the University Children's Hospital Zurich for the benefit of children suffering from cancer began 20 years ago.

Bern, 26. The number of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is on the rise all'over the world. This poses a growing threat to the effective treatment of infections and places a significant burden on health systems, including Switzerland's.

Macomics Ltd, a leader in macrophage drug discovery, announces that it has entered a scientific collaboration with Prof. Andrea Alimonti at IOR (Institute of Oncology Research), one of Switzerland's leading research institutes.

With over 600,000 deaths in 2022, malaria remains one of the biggest health threats particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.

The diagnosis is followed by despair - then maybe a glimpse of hope. When parents of a child with the genetic disease LAMA2-related muscular dystrophy search around online, one of the things they will encounter is SEAL Therapeutics, a start-up company at the University of Basel.

Immunologist Mike Recher sees a wide variety of health problems when he consults on rare immune disorders. Finding the cause requires both technology and lateral thinking. The range of symptoms that can occur when one of the cogs (or, perhaps, cogwheels) in the immune system's machinery gets stuck is enormous - from severe psoriasis to frequent infections to chronic diarrhea.

The Lymphoma Genomics Laboratory (IOR, USI) in Bellinzona identified a new mechanism behind the resistance to BTK and PI3K inhibitors used in the treatment of patients with follicular lymphoma, mantle cell lymphoma and marginal zone lymphoma. One of the causes of the failure of anticancer therapy in treating lymphomas is the development of drug resistance, which implies a decrease in the therapeutic efficacy of a given drug.

A team from the University of Geneva, the HUG and the IRCCS has drawn up recommendations for the effective and individualised use of biomarkers in memory clinics for the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease.

Vapes are an effective aid to quitting smoking tobacco cigarettes. However, they do not help to reduce nicotine dependence. This is shown by the results of the world's largest study on this topic, which was conducted by a Swiss-wide interdisciplinary research group led by the University of Bern. Vapes, also called e-cigarettes or electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) are electrically powered devices that emit nicotine in the form of vapor.

This new research discovered that patients with metastatic melanoma who respond to adoptive T cell therapy exhibit a coordinated crosstalk between intratumoral myeloid cells and tumor-reactive CD8+ T cells. The study *, published in Science Immunology , was conducted by Dr David Barras, Dr Eleonora Ghisoni, Dr Johanna Chiffelle and colleagues and directed by Dr Denarda Dangaj and Pr George Coukos , members of the Lausanne Branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research.

On December 15, 2023, the World Health Organization officially added noma to the list of neglected tropical diseases, which will make it easier to combat and research this poverty-related disease. The Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH) and the University of Basel both played a key role in ensuring noma was recognized in this manner.

On the road to recovery, patients come into contact with clinicians from a whole range of disciplines.

On the road to recovery, patients come into contact with clinicians from a whole range of disciplines.

Antibiotic resistance is a silent pandemic. The main objective of the Swiss Strategy on Antibiotic Resistance (StAR) is to ensure the effectiveness of antibiotics for human and animal health over the long term.

A team of researchers at USI has discovered the dimeric structural organisation of certain receptors among the principle drug targets in pharmacology.

The Molecular Oncology research group, led by Prof. Andrea Alimonti at the Institute of Oncology Research (IOR, affiliated to USI and member of Bios+), in close collaboration with the team of Prof. de Bono (Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and The Institute of Cancer Research, London, UK), has finally provided the first clinical evidence that myeloid inflammation can fuel disease progression and resistance to hormonal therapies in prostate cancer patients.

Swelling of one or more limbs due to lymphedema affects one in five women undergoing breast cancer surgery following the operation.

Almost 60 percent of all medicines displayed in the windows of pharmacies in Switzerland have no medically proven efficacy.

A joint study by the Universities of Lucerne and Zurich and the University Hospital Zurich and Swissmedic shows for the first time comprehensively how many people in Switzerland were admitted to hospital due to medication side effects. Despite the legal obligation, only a small proportion of these were reported in the eight-year observation center period.

The Corona Immunitas project has published the results of the first large-scale epidemiological study carried out since the Omicron variant supplanted Delta in Switzerland in early 2022. The results indicate a significant amount of antibodies present and exceptionally high neutralisation levels. The study also confirms that hybrid immunity, a combination of vaccination and infection, is the most effective.

ETH Zurich molecular biologist Mandy Boontanrart is researching gene therapies that could be used to cure two of the most common types of inherited anaemia. She has now developed a promising approach for so-called beta-hemoglobinopathies. Many hereditary diseases have largely been considered to be incurable.

Researchers at PSI have developed a new drug that could increase the survival chances of patients with metastatic prostate cancer. The drug is now being tested on patients in the PROGNOSTICS project. A research consortium consisting of the Paul Scherrer Institute, the University Hospital Basel and ETH Zurich is receiving two million Swiss francs in funding for this project.

Nanomedicine involves packaging drugs in microscopic particles to make them more effective.

A team from the University of Geneva, in collaboration with the CHUV, has developed a new method of encapsulating fecal bacteria to treat a serious intestinal infection.

Global progress against malaria has stagnated and novel medical interventions are urgently needed.

Cancer patients might one day benefit from being administered immune cells from healthy donors. But as things stand, receiving donor cells can cause severe or even fatal immune reactions. A researcher at ETH Zurich has now developed a technology that avoids these. Edo Kapetanovic is a medical doctor, but for a while now he has devoted himself entirely to research in synthetic immunology.

Researchers at the Institute of oncology research (IOR, affiliated to USI and member of Bios+ ) , in collaboration with researchers from the University of Padova, have made a groundbreaking discovery that could change the way we think about ageing and immune cells offering a potential new target for treatments in cases of prostate cancer.

Since 2016, the Swiss Cancer Center Léman provides a space for scientists and clinicians from across the Lake Geneva region to pool their efforts, share insights and work together on innovative cancer treatments.

The coronavirus keeps evolving, and in doing so, it evades our immune defences. But does the entire coronavirus evolve, or do some portions remain unchanged? Sieving through over 10 million coronavirus sequences, two PhD students at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB, Switzerland, affiliated with the Università della Svizzera italiana) discovered that some portions of the virus spike (the molecule on the virus that is key to infect human cells) were remarkably conserved.

The LOOP Zurich research center combines expertise from ETH Zurich, the University of Zurich and the four university hospitals in Zurich with the aim of developing more personalized therapies.

An international team highlights the importance of localising BRCA gene mutations for the treatment of ovarian cancer. Mutations of BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, which are inherited by 1 in 400 and 1 in 800 people respectively, significantly increase the risk of certain cancers such as ovarian, breast, pancreatic and prostate cancer.

An interdisciplinary research team from the University of Basel and the University Hospital Basel has studied the effects of the Covid-19 booster vaccination on the heart muscle.

A team from the UNIGE has found an alternative for patients who have developed resistance to chemotherapy treatments. Colorectal cancer is one of the most common cancers. Its treatment is mainly based on chemotherapy. However, over time, chemotherapy induces resistance in the majority of patients, who end up being unresponsive to the drugs.

A prestigious grant from the USA goes to the biomedical scientist Sven Rottenberg, University of Bern, and the clinical scientist Intidhar Labidi-Galy, University of Geneva and University Hospital of Geneva.

EPFL spin-off ArcoScreen has developed a platform that turns the discovery of new drugs for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, diabetes and cancer from a marathon into a sprint. The firm's microfluidic readout system assesses the response of G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) to new substances, delivering significant time and financial gains for pharmaceutical companies.