Researchers at Fudan University, in collaboration with Zhejiang Cancer Hospital (Hangzhou Institute of Medicine, Chinese Academy of Sciences) and Washington University in St. Louis, have released bacNeo, the first comprehensive computational toolkit dedicated to identifying bacteria-derived neoantigens in human cancers. The framework combines three modules, BACC for bacterial component classification, BACH for HLA allele typing, and BACP for bacterial peptide prioritization, into a single one-stop pipeline that accommodates metagenomic, metatranscriptomic, bulk and single-cell sequencing, and mass spectrometry data. A novel scoring system, SPARK (Score for Peptide Antigenicity Recognition and Kinetics), weights TAP transport efficiency against HLA-peptide binding affinity and reaches an area under the ROC curve of 0.81 on experimentally validated peptide-HLA datasets. The work, published in iMetaMed, provides a reproducible and modular foundation for systematic bacterial neoantigen discovery and supports the design of therapeutic vaccines, chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies, and immune checkpoint blockade strategies across diverse cancer types.

With rapid advances in synthetic biology and genetic engineering, genetically engineered bacteria (GEB) have emerged as a promising platform for biological therapy, addressing key limitations of conventional drug delivery systems and demonstrating significant clinical potential. By leveraging a modular design framework, GEB exhibits high biocompatibility and programmability, enabling precise genetic modifications for targeted delivery, dynamic responsiveness, and sustained therapeutic effects. This review systematically examines the therapeutic development of GEB, focusing on its pivotal roles in tumor therapy, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), metabolic disorders, and the treatment of complex infections. It outlines key design strategies—including sensing, payload release, and biocontainment modules—as well as evaluation frameworks and mechanisms of action. We also discuss major challenges to clinical translation, such as the limited availability of clinically validated chassis strains, the balance between bacterial fitness and therapeutic load, and persistent biosafety concerns. Future progress will depend on advancements in high-precision genome editing, intelligent responsive systems, and interdisciplinary collaboration to bridge the gap between preclinical promise and clinical application. This review aims to provide an up-to-date reference to facilitate the translation of GEB from laboratory discoveries to viable clinical applications in precision medicine.

The tumor microenvironment (TME) is a complex and dynamic ecosystem that plays a pivotal role in cancer progression and therapy resistance. Its heterogeneity and constant remodeling present significant challenges for effective treatment. The emergence of nanomedicine integrates nanotechnology and medicine, aiming to overcome and ameliorate the limitations of conventional therapeutic agents in cancer treatment. Despite the broad biomedical applications of nanomaterials, the clinical translation of nanodrugs remains hindered by the complexity and heterogeneity of the TME as well as challenges related to the physicochemical properties of nanomaterials. This paper published in iMetaMed underscores key challenges and difficulties currently faced by nanomaterials in cancer treatment, including: issues related to nanomaterial biosafety and long-term toxicity assessment; uncertainties in vivo biotransformation and metabolic pathways; therapeutic efficacy variations caused by spatiotemporal heterogeneity of the TME; barriers from laboratory research to clinical translation; and insufficient selectivity in the precise modulation of TME components.

In a new expert review, researchers examine gaps in how muscle health is addressed in clinical nutrition and lay out a research agenda for moving the field forward. In the review, published in Clinical Nutrition, the experts draw on existing research on muscle health across aging, cancer, critical illness, diabetes and obesity to consider how muscle health can be better incorporated into clinical nutrition.

Ultimately, the authors propose that “muscle health should be recognized as a central and measurable target of clinical nutrition rather than a secondary or downstream outcome.”

Chronic pain doesn’t only impact your physical health, but their mental health as well 

A large-scale retrospective study of 936 analytical records from 747 non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients demonstrates that droplet digital PCR (ddPCR) shows exceptionally high concordance with next-generation sequencing (NGS) for detecting EGFR mutations across diverse clinical specimen types, including fresh tumor tissue, formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissue, plasma-derived cell-free DNA (cfDNA), and pleural effusion supernatant. The overall positive percent agreement (PPA) between ddPCR and NGS was 98.82% (925/936; exact 95% CI, 97.91%–99.41%). Variant allele frequencies (VAFs) measured by the two methods were strongly correlated (Pearson's r = 0.975). The study also validated that pre-capture NGS libraries can serve as reliable surrogate templates for ddPCR when original DNA input is limited, offering a practical solution for low-input clinical scenarios. These findings position ddPCR as a robust complement to NGS for rapid, sensitive, and cost-effective EGFR mutation testing in precision oncology workflows.