The human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination programme in England has not only been associated with a substantial reduction in cervical disease, but has done so in all socioeconomic groups, finds a study published by The BMJ today.

Although women living in the most deprived areas are still at higher risk of cervical disease than those in less deprived areas, the results show that well planned and executed public health interventions can both improve health and reduce health inequalities.

Deaths from cancer or infections can occur when available treatments are ineffective. Once turned on, pregnane X receptor (PXR) activates the expression of genes encoding enzymes that metabolize external chemicals, including drugs. This causes a significant drop in the effectiveness of chemotherapy, antivirals and other pharmaceuticals. Blocking the PXR activity is notoriously difficult, as many drugs that bind the protein, whether intentionally or unintentionally, activate it. Scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital have leveraged chemical and structural studies in the design of PXR inhibitors to better understand this process.

Researchers at Fred Hutch Cancer Center have found in pre-clinical studies that an experimental gene therapy for genital and oral herpes removed 90% or more of the infection and suppressed how much virus can be released from an infected individual, which suggests that the therapy would also reduce the spread of the virus.

"Herpes is very sneaky. It hides out among nerve cells and then reawakens and causes painful skin blisters," said Keith Jerome, MD, PhD, professor in the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division at Fred Hutch.

Scientists from Trinity College Dublin have made an important breakthrough that offers promise for developing new immune therapies for cancer. They have discovered that a vaccine adjuvant - or "booster" - called C100 promotes potent anti-tumour immunity when it is injected directly into tumours in an animal model.

The scientists found that C100, derived from chitin - one of the most common building materials in nature, and which gives strength to the exoskeletons of crustaceans, insects, and the cell walls of fungi - is highly effective at stimulating a key sensing and signalling molecule which regulates anti-tumour immune responses.

Researchers at MIT, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Harvard Medical School have developed a potential new treatment for alopecia areata, an autoimmune disorder that causes hair loss and affects people of all ages, including children.

For most patients with this type of hair loss, there is no effective treatment. The team developed a microneedle patch that can be painlessly applied to the scalp and releases drugs that help to rebalance the immune response at the site, halting the autoimmune attack.

Using artificial intelligence, Ludwig Cancer Research scientists have developed a powerful predictive model for identifying the most potent cancer killing immune cells for use in cancer immunotherapies.

Combined with additional algorithms, the predictive model, described in the current issue of the journal Nature Biotechnology, can be applied to personalized cancer treatments that tailor therapy to the unique cellular makeup of each patient's tumors.

About 79% of clinical trial participants experienced measurable improvement after receiving experimental, CRISPR-based gene editing that is designed to fix a rare form of blindness, according to a paper published today in the New England Journal of Medicine.

"This trial shows CRISPR gene editing has exciting potential to treat inherited retinal degeneration," said Mark Pennesi, M.D., Ph.D., a corresponding author on the paper, an ophthalmologist and Oregon Health & Science University's lead scientist for the Phase 1/2 BRILLIANCE trial.