Medical Bulletin 1/April/2023

Here are the top medical news for the day:

CAR T cells improve patient quality of life: Study

Chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapies are developed by harvesting a patient’s own T cells (the immune system’s primary cancer-killing cells), engineering them to target proteins specific to the surface of cancer cells, and reintroducing these modified T cells back into the patient’s immune system to kill the cancer cells.

CAR-T therapy has transformed cancer treatment, yet relatively few studies have investigated the impact of the therapy on longitudinal patient quality of life - an aspect of care that often suffers from receiving traditional intensive cancer medications, such as chemotherapy. A new study published in Blood Advances demonstrates that some effective cancer treatments do improve quality of life, revealing that patients with blood cancers experienced a significant improvement in their reported well-being six months after receiving CAR T-cell therapy.

Reference:

Connor Johnson et al,AMERICAN SOCIETY OF HEMATOLOGY,JOURNAL: Blood Advances

Trigger for major depression opens new possibilities for treatments

Major depression is among the world’s most urgent health needs. Its numbers have surged in recent years, especially among young adults. As depression’s disability, suicide numbers and medical expenses have climbed, a study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2021 put its economic burden at $326 billion annually in the United States.

A common amino acid, glycine, can deliver a “slow-down” signal to the brain, likely contributing to major depression, anxiety and other mood disorders in some people, scientists at the Wertheim UF Scripps Institute for Biomedical Innovation & Technology have found.

Reference:

Orphan receptor GPR158 serves as a metabotropic glycine receptor: mGlyR,UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA,Science

Brain region linking short-term to long-term memory discovered

A new study identifies the anterior thalamus as a brain region linking hippocampus and cortex that is key to the memory consolidation process. "The findings provide traction toward understanding how transient memories reorganize across the brain to progressively more enduring forms,” says Rockefeller’s Priya Rajasethupathy.

New problems, new tech

The standard model for memory consolidation holds that the hippocampus forms new memories and, over time, trains the cortex to store enduring memories. But scientists trying to figure out how that happens have been stymied by technological limitations.

Reference:

Anteromedial Thalamus Gates the Selection & Stabilization of Long-Term Memories,Cell ,doi 10.1016/j.cell.2023.02.024