Cancer immunotherapy has revolutionized cancer care, yet most patients still fail to respond. A new study reveals how cancer cells package the immune-suppressing protein PD-L1 into tiny extracellular vesicles, undermining immunotherapy’s effectiveness. Remarkably, the researchers identify a common class of cholesterol-lowering drugs—statins—as powerful inhibitors of this process. By uncovering a hidden mechanism of immune resistance and a readily available way to block it, the study opens new avenues for improving cancer immunotherapy outcomes.

A bitter taste has always been considered a warning signal, devoted to protecting us from ingesting potentially harmful substances. But bitter taste receptors can apparently do much more than just evaluate the taste of food. A recent study by the Leibniz Institute for Food Systems Biology at the Technical University of Munich now shows that certain human bitter taste receptors also respond to steroid hormones. They could therefore play a previously underestimated role in physiological processes.

Malaria remains the mostly deadly parasitic disease in the world. Although it is not endemic to countries such as Spain, imported cases are diagnosed each year in people returning from areas where the infection is common. These patients can rapidly progress to severe forms of the disease, but detecting which patients are at higher risk is not always easy, especially in settings where clinical experience is limited and initial symptoms are non-specific. A recent study led by a research team from the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV) and ISGlobal (Barcelona Institute for Global Health), a centre promoted by the “la Caixa” Foundation, has led to the development of a new tool to tackle this challenge. Basically, it is a system that uses a mobile phone to combine rapid diagnostic tests with video analysis and it is capable not only of detecting the infection in under six minutes but also of predicting which patients may develop severe forms of malaria.