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01 / 05
A New Strategy to Attack Aggressive Brain Cancer

Associated Press | Noncommunicable Disease

A New Strategy to Attack Aggressive Brain Cancer

“A new strategy to fight an extremely aggressive type of brain tumor showed promise in a pair of experiments with a handful of patients.

Scientists took patients’ own immune cells and turned them into “living drugs” able to recognize and attack glioblastoma. In the first-step tests, those cells shrank tumors at least temporarily, researchers reported Wednesday.

So-called CAR-T therapy already is used to fight blood-related cancers like leukemia but researchers have struggled to make it work for solid tumors. Now separate teams at Massachusetts General Hospital and the University of Pennsylvania are developing next-generation CAR-T versions designed to get past some of glioblastoma’s defenses.”

From Associated Press.

NPR | Drug Use

Drug Deaths Plummet Among Young Americans as Fentanyl Carnage Eases

“‘What we’re seeing is a massive reduction in [fatal] overdose risk, among Gen Z in particular,’ said Nabarun Dasgupta, an addiction researcher at the University of North Carolina. ‘Ages 20 to 29 lowered the risk by 47%, cut it right in half.’

This stunning drop in drug deaths among people in the U.S. is being tracked in data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other federal agencies.

The latest available records found fentanyl and other drugs killed more than 31,000 people (see chart) under the age of 35 in 2021. By last year, that number had plummeted to roughly 16,690 fatal overdoses, according to provisional CDC data.”

From NPR.

Our World in Data | Noncommunicable Disease

Childhood Pneumonia Deaths Have Plummeted in Nepal

“In the early 1980s, Nepal’s children suffered from some of the highest death rates from pneumonia in the world, with over 1,400 deaths for every 100,000 children under five. That meant around 39,000 children died from pneumonia each year, more than from any other cause.

Since then, Nepal has made huge progress. The death rate has fallen almost 20-fold. This improvement is due to various measures, including pneumococcal and Hib vaccines, better access to healthcare and antibiotics, and improved nutrition.”

From Our World in Data.

New York Times | Noncommunicable Disease

A Cutting-Edge Cancer Therapy Offers Hope for Lupus Patients

“With the rise of CAR T-cell therapy in oncology, Dr. Georg Schett, a rheumatologist and immunologist at the University of Erlangen in Germany, started mulling a new idea to help lupus patients.

Lupus causes the body’s B cells — white blood cells that produce antibodies — to go haywire. In CAR T-cell therapy, a patient’s own T cells, a type of immune cell, are extracted and engineered to wipe out disease-causing B cells. They’re then put back in the body, where they replicate, acting like ‘serial killers’ that can clear out B cells even from deep within tissues that other drugs can’t reach, Dr. Schett said.

Perhaps most tantalizing to Dr. Schett was the idea that a single infusion might do the trick, freeing young women from the constraints, and uncertainty, of living with lupus…

Of the two dozen lupus patients Dr. Schett has treated, all but one went into remission and remained off treatment after at least six months, and some for longer than four years. (One patient who had a relapse underwent CAR T-cell therapy a second time and is now symptom free.)

It will be years before doctors know for sure whether those results can last. In the meantime, patients say the treatment has given them an opportunity to live a normal life.”

From New York Times.