During a fire, chemicals called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, are released into the environment, exposing everyone from firefighters to backyard grillers. A handful of PAHs have been officially identified as potentially cancer-causing, and only one is considered a carcinogen.

Professional field experience from UCLA adjunct professor of chemistry — and full-time Los Angeles County Fire Department firefighter — Derek Urwin helped to focus investigations into how PAHs interact with a DNA sequence that is mutated in one third of all human cancers.

Urwin and his UCLA colleagues used molecular simulations to show that six PAHs are more likely than the known carcinogen to latch onto a mutational hot spot in the genome linked to cancer, and to evade a crucial mechanism for repairing DNA lesions.

Researchers from the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute have found that the efficacy of varni-cel, a CAR-T infusion product for B-ALL patients, is highly dependent on intrinsic features of the CAR-T cells themselves and their progression within the patient. In a recent study published at Cell Reports Medicine, the team identified three key success markers: the CD4:CD8 ratio, exhaustion signals and the expansion of gamma-delta cytotoxic T-cells. Taken together, the results may help reaching higher complete remission rates and sustained disease-free survival in the near future.