Getting SMARTer about New Year’s resolutions

Welcome to 2024! Many people approach the new year with excitement and anticipation for the possibilities and opportunities ahead. With the new year comes one of the most popular times and ways to make big changes in our lives—New Year’s resolutions. 

Partnering with health plans to combat kidney disease: Business solutions to report against the Kidney Health Evaluation Measure and close gaps in care

Labcorp to Speak at the 42nd Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference

BURLINGTON, N.C. , Jan. 2, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Labcorp (NYSE: LH), a global leader of innovative and comprehensive laboratory services, announced today that members of the executive management team will participate in a fireside chat at the 42nd Annual J.P.

Precision Medicine World Conference (PMWC) 2024

Expanded PersistenceT™ panels for deeper analysis of CAR T persistence

Adoptive cell therapy (ACT) with T-cells reprogrammed to express chimeric antigen receptors (CAR T-cells) bind specific antigens on the surface of cancer cells and trigger a cytotoxic response. CAR T-cell therapies have been successful in patients with hematological malignancies; however, patients remain at risk of relapse due to short-term persistence or non-expansion of CAR T-cells.1,2 This requirement for persistence is more evident in solid tumors as the hostile tumor microenvironment induces T-cell exhaustion.3,4 Studies have found that genomic and phenotypic features of CAR T-cells were major determinants of their persistence. Clinical results have shown that stemness and a memory-cell-like phenotype can promote sustained in vivo persistence of adoptively transferred CAR T-cells.3,4

Exploring orthotopic glioblastoma models to treat tumors and strengthen immune responses in the brain

Glioblastoma (GBM) patients are known to have a poor prognosis and tumor progression with high mortality and a median survival of only 12-15 months. Currently, anti-GBM therapy includes a multi-modality method involving radiotherapies and surgical removal of the tumor in combination with chemotherapy.1

Plate-based 3D culture assays that mimic the tumor microenvironment and predict in vivo responses

2D in vitro assays do not reflect the tumor architecture and environment found in vivo, resulting in differences in the outcomes and pharmacological potencies of test agents being screened when comparing 2D in vitro versus in vivo models.

The nCounter® IO 360™ panel and flow cytometry combine transcriptome and immune subset immunophenotypic profiles to offer comprehensive analysis of tumor immunotherapy

Transcriptomic profiling can be used to examine the interaction between the tumor microenvironment (TME) and the immune system and is a powerful tool to investigate the mechanistic action of immunotherapies. In this Tech Spotlight, we demonstrate how gene expression measured in solid tumors using the nCounter® PanCancer IO 360™ panel (NanoString Technologies) can be combined with flow cytometry to provide a comprehensive evaluation of the effects that immunotherapy has on the anti-tumor immune response.

Raising the Bar in Preclinical Oncology

New oncology drugs only have a 3.4% success rate once making it from Phase I clinical trials to FDA approval. This is the lowest success rate among the 21 major disease indications.1 This poor success rate leaves everyone, from the patients to the benchtop scientists, questioning the validity of the models and the resulting data. This is nothing new in the world of cancer research; we are all attempting to treat a disease that has the ability to fool its host and adapt to survive.

RM-1: A Syngeneic Murine Prostate Gland Carcinoma Model

Most prostate cancers are adenocarcinomas that develop from the gland cells that produce seminal fluid. The American Cancer Society's estimates are about 248,530 new cases in the United States for 2021, resulting in approximately 34,130 deaths.1 About 1 man in 8 will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during his lifetime and 1 in 41 will die of it. 1 Globally, prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in men, behind lung cancer.1 Fortunately, prostate cancer, when detected and treated early, has a nearly 100% estimated five-year survival rate for U.S. patients.2 Depending on the tumor stage, treatments can include active surveillance prostatectomy, beam radiation therapy, brachytherapy, hormone therapy, chemotherapy and treatments aimed at bone metastases in Stage IV cancers. To develop novel therapeutics, as monotherapies or in combination with clinical standards of care, testing in the most appropriate preclinical tumor model is key.