Lifeboat Foundation

After enduring intense treatments and a 10-hour surgery as a high school junior to treat a rare form of cancer, Callan currently has no evidence of disease and is a student of fine arts at the University of Texas. Read how his family is helping others diagnosed with this rare cancer.

In October 2021, Callan began experiencing a mysterious pain in his neck. A talented artist and a good student, Callan had been looking forward to his junior year of high school. After also developing a cough, he was diagnosed with walking pneumonia, but later imaging showed a large tumor in his chest.

Multiple doctors told Callan the tumor, diagnosed as synovial sarcoma, was inoperable. Synovial sarcoma is often deadly without surgery, but his family eventually found a team willing to operate. Callan currently has no evidence of disease.

Continue reading “Callan — Childhood Cancer Survivor” »

Bendamustine administration within 9 months of apheresis significantly reduced response rates and survival in patients with relapsed/refractory large B-cell lymphoma:

CD19-directed chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy provides durable responses and a potential cure in approximately one third of patients with relapsed or refractory large B-cell lymphoma (R/R LBCL). Although it is known that therapy with the lymphotoxic chemotherapy agent bendamustine, prior to autologous T-cell collection, can impair T-cell number and function, its impact on patient outcomes has not been systematically addressed.

Investigators have now conducted a retrospective, multicenter study of 439 patients with R/R LBCL who had received two or more previous lines of therapy and were infused with commercially available CD19-targeted CAR T cells (axicabtagene ciloleucel or tisagenlecleucel). Of these patients, 80 (18%) had received one or more cycles of bendamustine, including 42 who had been treated within 9 months of apheresis. At baseline, bendamustine-exposed patients, compared with bendamustine-naive patients, were older (66 vs. 61 years), had poorer performance status (1, 16% vs. 7%), were more heavily pretreated (2 previous lines of therapy, 71% vs. 28%), and were more likely to have transformed indolent B-cell lymphoma (45% vs. 15%).

At apheresis, bendamustine-exposed patients, compared with bendamustine-naive patients, had a significantly poorer overall response rate (ORR; 53% vs. 72%; P0.01), shorter progression-free survival (PFS; 3.1 vs. 6.2 months; P0.04), and shorter overall survival (OS; 10.3 vs. 23.5 months; P0.01). For those who received bendamustine within 9 months of apheresis, ORR was even lower (40%), and PFS and OS were shorter (1.3 and 4.6 months, respectively). Bendamustine-exposed patients also had lower absolute lymphocyte counts, lower CD4⁺ T-cell counts, and poorer CAR T-cell expansion, but had similar rates of cytokine release syndrome and immune-effector cell-associated neurotoxicity syndrome.

Continue reading “Bendamustine Impairs Outcomes with CAR T-Cell Therapy” »

Washington [US], March 5 (ANI): A team of researchers from Michigan State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine made a discovery that may have significance for therapeutic gene editing strategies, cancer diagnostics and therapies and other advancements in biotechnology. Kathy Meek, a professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine, and collaborators at Cambridge University and the National Institutes of Health have uncovered a previously unknown aspect of how DNA double-stranded breaks are repaired.

A large protein kinase called DNA-PK starts the DNA repair process; in their new report, two distinct DNA-PK protein complexes are characterized, each of which has a specific role in DNA repair that cannot be assumed by the other.

“It still gives me chills,” says Meek. “I don’t think anyone would have predicted this.”

Web3D projects from around the community to inspire your next 3D project on the web.

3Dialogue Discord Server = https://discord.gg/8fqZW5gF5r.

Continue reading “Web3D Hype 2, Nov 2023” »

“We are interested in studying shear deformation on icy moons because that type of faulting can facilitate the exchange of surface and subsurface materials through shear heating processes, potentially creating environments conducive for the emergence of life,” said Dr. Liliane Burkhard.

Two recent studies published in Icarus examine tectonic processes known as shear stresses which are also referred to as strike-slip faults on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, and Saturn’s largest moon, Ganymede. While such processes are common on Earth, specifically with the San Andreas Fault in northern California, and have been observed on several icy moons throughout the solar system, these two studies hope to shed new light on the inner workings that cause these processes to occur on Titan and Ganymede, the latter of which is the largest moon in the solar system.

True color image of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, passing in front of the ringed planet taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)

Continue reading “Titan and Ganymede Revealed: Understanding Shear Deformation on Icy Moons” »

XAI, Elon Musk’s new company, claims to have built a powerful language model with cutting-edge performance in just two months.

“We’ve assembled the most accurate list of Kepler planet candidates and their properties to date,” said Dr. Jack Lissauer. “NASA’s Kepler mission has discovered the majority of known exoplanets, and this new catalog will enable astronomers to learn more about their characteristics.”

Though NASA’s Kepler space telescope officially “retired” in October 2018, scientists are still pouring over data from the iconic exoplanet hunter that operated for more than nine years. Most recently, scientists came upon data that added four more exoplanets to the Kepler-385 system, which is located approximately 4,700 light-years from Earth and had previously been known to contain three exoplanets, all of which were discovered in 2014.

Artist’s illustration displaying two of the seven planets within the Kepler-385 system. (Credit: NASA/Daniel Rutter)

Continue reading “Seven Sweltering Exoplanets Found in Kepler Data” »

Researchers have discovered that patterns of activity in our neurons are more influenced by the shape of the brain – its grooves, contours, and folds – than by its complex interconnections. ⁠

“The conventional view is that specific thoughts or sensations elicit activity in specific parts of the brain. However, our study reveals structured patterns of activity across nearly the entire brain, relating to thoughts and sensations in much the same way that a musical note arises from vibrations occurring along the entire length of a violin string, not just an isolated segment.”⁠

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Continue reading “Have we got the brain all wrong? Study shows its shape is more important than its wiring” »

The study, led by Jimo Borjigin, associate professor of molecular and integrative physiology and neurology at Michigan, was very small, featuring only four patients. But the findings echo animal model studies, where the presence of gamma waves in dying brains has also been observed, including in a previous study in rats that Borjigin and colleagues ran a decade earlier.

“These data demonstrate that the surge of gamma power and connectivity observed in animal models of cardiac arrest can be observed in select patients during the process of dying,” the researchers wrote in their paper, published in PNAS.

What are gamma waves? Gamma waves are high-frequency brain waves researchers believe represent multiple areas of the brain working together in complex thoughts. Take, for example, combining the sight, sound, and smell of a car to get a full picture of the vehicle, Ajmal Zemmar, a neurosurgeon at the University of Louisville uninvolved with the study, told Science.

Continue reading “Complex brain activity detected in dying patients” »