After participating in a global clinical trial, leaders at the Children’s Hospital Colorado (Children’s Colorado) Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders and the University of Colorado Cancer Center are celebrating results so transformative, they change the standard of care for treating most kids with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL), the most common form of childhood cancer. The new therapy is less toxic than traditional chemotherapy, resulting in significantly fewer side effects like severe infections, mouth sores and bone marrow suppression, leading to improved quality of life for patients.

Tires and degrading garbage shed tiny pieces of plastic into the air, creating a form of air pollution that UC San Francisco researchers suspect may be causing respiratory and other illnesses.  

Many women are diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) at an age when they are considering starting a family. What does the disease and its medication mean for the child? To answer this question, a research team headed by Professor Kerstin Hellwig from the Department of Neurology at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, analyzed over 3,700 pregnancies of women with MS. More than 2,800 of them were treated with different immunomodulating agents before or during pregnancy. “We found that most therapies were not associated with an increased risk of miscarriage, premature birth or major birth defects,” says Kerstin Hellwig. The researchers published their findings in The Lancet Regional Health Europe on December 2, 2024.

Many infants in Sweden are given milk cereal drinks, ready-to-mix liquid drink complements to breast milk, after six months of age. New research in Acta Paediatrica found evidence that these products are linked to early rapid weight gain but not to higher anthropometric measures—such as body mass index or waist-to-height ratio—later in childhood.

The Keck School of Medicine of USC has joined the Ryght Research Network, a global network of academic institutions, community practices and health care systems that uses generative artificial intelligence to make clinical trials more efficient. As the network’s first academic site in the United States, the Keck School of Medicine will leverage the collaboration to offer more clinical trials to more patients and to build new AI tools that safely speed up the process of developing medical treatments. The alliance between medical school and Ryght AI was brokered by MESH Strategic Partnerships, a specialized service that builds and sustains relationships between the Keck School of Medicine and industry groups. In addition to streamlining the process of conducting clinical trials, the Ryght Research Network will connect USC researchers with new clinical trial and sponsorship opportunities. It will also provide patients and health care providers with a user-friendly portal for exploring available clinical trials. Down the line, the Keck School of Medicine will even have the chance to develop customized AI-driven tools that suit the needs of its patients, providers and investigators.