Details about variants hiding in the deluge of genetic SARS-CoV-2 sequences would be good to know, if only researchers a new program developed by Rice University’s George R. Brown School of Engineering will make it possible, at least for “intrahost variants,” those that appear in genome data from the same COVID-19-positive person. A Rice team led by computer scientist Todd Treangen and graduate student Yunxi Liu has developed Variabel, which accurately identifies “low-frequency variants” of the virus that causes COVID-19....

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is the most common leukemia in adults and, despite advances in targeted therapies, is associated with poor prognoses. Immunotherapy has shown promise, especially in combination with chemotherapy. A research team led by V. Lokesh Battula, Ph.D., demonstrated that the immune checkpoint protein B7-H3 may serve as a potential immunotherapy target in patients with AML. The team found elevated expression of B7-H3 to be associated with poor treatment outcomes in patients with AML. In preclinical studies,...

A moderate amount of a peptide-enhanced, biological cancer drug goes a long way in treating breast cancers that metastasize to the bone. A study by scientists at Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine demonstrated the effective treatment of such cancers in rodent models, bringing hope for new therapies to treat bone metastases. The open-access study advances techniques pioneered by Rice chemist Han Xiao and his co-author at Baylor, biologist Xiang Zhang. They discovered through extensive testing that...

A study led by researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center reported that the MEK inhibitor trametinib reduced the risk of disease progression or death by 52% compared to standard-of-care therapies for the treatment of low-grade serous ovarian carcinoma. The international, multi-center Phase II/III trial led by David Gershenson, M.D., professor of Gynecologic Oncology & Reproductive Medicine, is the first positive randomized clinical trial of any therapy to demonstrate significantly increased progression-free survival (PFS) and objective...

In a new study, researchers found evidence that HPV vaccination is reducing the incidence of anal cancer among young adults in the US. Researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch analyzed data from the US Cancer Statistics database from 2001 to 2018 to examine anal cancer incidences among different age groups and determine the potential impact of HPV vaccination. They found that cancer incidence among young adults 20 to 44 years of age began to rapidly and significantly decrease within...

A blood test, combined with a risk model based on an individual’s history, more accurately determines who is likely to benefit from lung cancer screening than the current U.S. recommendation, according to a study led by researchers from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. A personalized lung cancer risk assessment, combining a blood test based on a four-marker protein panel developed at MD Anderson and an independent model (PLCOm2012) that accounts for smoking history, was more sensitive and...

Houston Methodist Sugar Land Hospital in Fort Bend County is using an innovative, minimally invasive technique to treat chronic subdural hematomas, serious bleeding in the membrane between the skull and the brain caused by head trauma. Board-certified neurosurgeon Tsz Yeung Lau, M.D., recently performed a successful meningeal artery embolization (MAE) to stop a patient’s bleeding. The patient – a woman in her 80s – was on blood thinners for a heart condition and had recently...

Dr. Eric Walser will debut a new treatment for prostate cancer that uses focused ultrasound beams rather than needles or incisions. “This is a radical new therapy which also shows promise and is approved for the treatment of essential tremors and Parkinson’s disease,” said Walser, chair of Radiology and director of the Interventional Radiology Department at the University of Texas Medical Branch. “We see future applications for brain cancer and cancer in other parts of the body....

Combination therapies including venetoclax and another therapy have displayed promising results against subtypes of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) that are particularly difficult to treat, including relapsed or refractory AML with a specific mutation, high-risk AML, and treated secondary AML. AML is a type of leukemia in which the myeloid stem cells produce immature blood cells, rather than mature, healthy cells, causing anemia and risk of bleeding and infection. Most patients with AML are not cured...

Hypoxia — insufficient oxygen levels in tissues — initiates cancer cell invasion and metastasis through the hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF) protein. During this process, cancer cells undergo a conversion to amoeboid migration, although the underlying mechanisms are not clear. New research led by Veronika te Boekhorst, Ph.D., and Peter Friedl, M.D., Ph.D., identified calpain-2 as a key regulator of the amoeboid conversion in response to hypoxia. The researchers demonstrated that hypoxia and HIF stabilization stimulate calpain-2 to...