James Weger-Lucarelli, associate professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences and Pathobiology at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, received a five-year, $2.01 million award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences in July to investigate how infected cells live and die, and what they signal to their neighbors when they do. The grant could eventually point toward better antiviral drugs and more effective virus-based cancer treatments.

In their quest to understand how cancers take root, grow and spread, scientists have for the past half-century explored the genetic aberrations and microenvironmental peculiarities of tumors and their constituent cells.

Peroxisomes are small structures inside cells that help remove harmful substances but also break down fats. In animal studies, researchers disrupted these structures and found it damaged the cells that produce insulin (called beta or β cells) in three ways: promoted oxidative stress (a kind of cellular wear and tear), altered the chemical structure of the hormone insulin, and reduced signs that the cells were fully mature and functioning normally. Strangely, the animals released more insulin in response to sugar, yet their bodies were less able to keep blood sugar under control.

The study, published in JCI Insight, helps explain how problems inside cells may drive the loss of healthy insulin production seen in diabetes.

A newly developed radiotheranostic pair, ⁶⁸Ga/¹⁷⁷Lu-NYM096,  can identify tumors and effectively deliver targeted radiotherapy to patients with metastatic clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC). Using a small molecule compound, the new approach helps to mitigate toxicity issues common with treatment, offering a safe and feasible strategy for those with end-stage disease. This research was published in the September issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine.

Scientists from Gladstone Institutes, UC San Francisco, and Stanford University, in collaboration with Biohub, have unveiled a massive, high-resolution functional map of human immune cells that promises to transform our understanding of how genetics control health and disease. Published in the journal Cell, the study represents a landmark achievement in immunology and genomics. By systematically stress-testing genes across the genome in 22 million human immune cells, scientists moved beyond mere DNA sequencing to decode the dynamic circuits that govern how these genes actually work in the context of health and disease.