Behind the Paper
The real stories behind the latest research papers, from conception to publication, the highs and the lows
Expanding deserts drove mammals and hominids out of Eurasia into Africa
The emergence of deserts in Arabia had a decisive impact on the evolution and migratory movements of mammals including our human ancestors. This is one of our conclusions after studying a 10-million-year climate history of Arabia, respectively Mesopotamia.
Know thy enemy: Resolving the SARS-CoV-2 gene set and understanding COVID-19 variants using evolution
Can comparative genomics resolve the protein-coding gene set of SARS-CoV-2? Yes! We compared 44 Sarbecovirus genomes to determine which SARS-CoV-2 candidate genes encode functional proteins and which mutations are likely functional, so future efforts can focus on real genes and important mutations.
Measuring the effect of Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs) on mobility during the COVID-19 pandemic using global mobility data
Evaluating the efficacy of government interventions used to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 has been challenging. Mobility data from phones can be used as a low-cost and standardised mechanism to observe the change in the aggregate movement of populations in response to interventions stimuli.
Tumor-promoting immune cells retrained to fight most aggressive type of brain cancer
Glioblastomas (GBM) are frequently resistant to immunotherapy. We showed that targeting regulatory T cells (Tregs) with an agonistic anti-GITR antibody reprograms tumor-infiltrating Tregs to effector cells, overcoming response to PD1 blockade in preclinical models of GBM.
Overcoming cancer drug resistance by blocking the production of mitochondrial ATP that fuels drug efflux pumps
The presence of drug efflux pumps that prevent drug accumulation in chemoresistant cancer cells is a cause of cancer treatment failure. We show that these drug pumps need mitochondrial ATP as fuel and that blocking mitochondrial ATP production with novel MCJ mimetics overcomes cancer chemoresistance
Behind the manuscript AL amyloidosis
1 of the major un met need for patients with amyloidosis is earlier diagnosis. Currently 30% of patients succumb to the disease within the 1st year following diagnosis. This is because the diagnosis is delayed due to failure recognize.
