Tuberculosis is still one of the deadliest infectious diseases, causing over one million deaths each year worldwide. On the other hand, about one-fourth of the world's population carries Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis) without showing any symptoms, and most of these carriers do not develop the disease.

The current anti-tuberculosis vaccine, BCG, is administered worldwide. However, considering that more than 10 million new tuberculosis cases are reported each year, its effectiveness is deemed insufficient.

Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, have developed a new nanomedicine therapy that delivers anticancer drugs to lung cancer cells and enhances the immune system's ability to fight cancer. The team showed promising results for the new therapy in cancer cells in the lab and in mouse lung tumor models, with potential applications for improving care and outcomes for patients with tumors that have failed to respond to traditional immunotherapy. Their findings are published in Science Advances.

Immune system cells called macrophages play an unexpected role in the complicated connection between obesity and cancer, a Vanderbilt University Medical Center-led research team has discovered.

Obesity increases the frequency of macrophages in tumors and induces their expression of the immune checkpoint protein PD-1 - a target of cancer immunotherapies. The findings, published June 12 in the journal Nature, provide a mechanistic explanation for how obesity can contribute to both increased cancer risk and enhanced responses to immunotherapy.

Proteins are workhorses that carry out most of the biological functions in our cells. While the genes we inherit from our parents, our so-called genome, are fixed and usually remain unchanged throughout our lives, proteins in our bodies are constantly changing, as we age, under different health conditions and upon stimulation, such as with medical treatment.

This makes monitoring proteins and their molecular changes - the study of proteomics - beneficial for drug discovery, disease diagnosis and health management.

Drugs with the potential to change the course of Alzheimer’s disease are expected to be approved by mid-year in the UK. Healthcare services may need to change to ensure that all patients have equitable access to these new modifying anti-amyloid therapies, according to research led by Queen Mary University of London and University College London (UCL).

Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of dementia. Of the 944,000 people living with dementia in the UK, 60-80% have Alzheimer's.

A bacterial enzyme called histidine kinase is a promising target for new classes of antibiotics. However, it has been difficult to develop drugs that target this enzyme, because it is a "hydrophobic" protein that loses its structure once removed from its normal location in the cell membrane.

Now, an MIT-led team has found a way to make the enzyme water-soluble, which could make it possible to rapidly screen potential drugs that might interfere with its functions.

Researchers from Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine in Japan have successfully treated the skin diseases epidermolytic ichthyosis (EI) and ichthyosis with confetti (IWC) by transplanting genetically healthy skin to inflamed areas. Transplanting healthy skin to inflamed areas has been used as a treatment option for severe burn injuries. They applied this technique from a common disease to rare diseases.