Samuel Hume
@SamuelBHume
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Writing about progress in medicine | @UniofOxford and @FoulkesFdn
United Kingdom
Joined January 2019
Top 5 advances in medicine this week (🧵) 1. The first-in-human use of stem cells to repair the heart The video shows how the engineered heart muscle contracts - in a dish This approach requires surgery and immunosuppression, and with only one patient so far, so it's not perfect: larger trials are underway!
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Nerve problems can make inflammatory skin conditions better This man's psoriasis cleared up after he damaged the nerves that supply his right hand:
Dit is een van de meest bizarre fenomenen waar ik ooit over gelezen heb: na een herseninfarct met halfzijdige verlamming kunnen mensen in die lichaamshelft "genezen" van huidziekten en auto-immuunziekten
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This is fascinating Some proteins 'phase separate' - they form droplets, like oil in water, that concentrate them in certain parts of the cell The breast cancer oncogene, FOXM1, is one of these proteins. You can see how it forms these droplets pretty clearly here: It turns out that this concentrates FOXM1, a transcription factor, over genes that drive cancer - including genes that protect the tumour from the immune system This group developed peptides to disrupt phase separation by FOXM1 - they all worked, but FIP4 was by far the most effective: FIP4 blocks the super-active oncogenic transcription driven by phase-separated FOXM1, and makes the tumour much more immunogenic This means that FIP4 reduces breast cancer growth, and enhances anti-PD1 immunotherapy, too (in mice!): This presents a potentially new way to target cancer, even for traditionally undruggable targets: disruption of phase separation Xie et al. in Nature (
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20,000 - thank you for following! The progress in science and medicine we are seeing continues to amaze me: the only way is up 🚀🚀🚀
Top 5 advances in medicine this week (🧵) 1. A tool to image inflammation Inflammation happens in a range of diseases - autoimmunity, aging, cancer - but we lack a tool to visualise it This study used CD45, which is expressed by all - and only - immune cells, as a marker of inflammation Combined with positron emission tomography (PET), this approach was used to detect inflammation (in mice!) in the lungs and colon (shown in the movie)
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