Fatty acids in the tumor microenvironment reprogram neutrophils to induce adenosine-mediated immunosuppression in mice - Nature

Neutrophils are white blood cells that form part of the body's first line of defence. Researchers have now demonstrated for the first time that neutrophils are found in many tissues during embryonic development, and that they can perform the same functions as adult neutrophils. The findings warrant further study on the role of embryonic neutrophils in tissue development and in responding to infections in fetuses and newborns. Neutrophils are part of innate immune defence. When inflammation occurs, they rapidly migrate from the bloodstream into tissues to eliminate harmful microbes. Their role is well understood in adults, but remarkably little is known about embryonic neutrophils.

CAR-T cell therapy has transformed the treatment of certain blood cancers, but getting the therapy to patients remains complicated, expensive, and slow. The standard process requires doctors to collect a patient's immune cells and send them to a specialized facility, where the cells are genetically modified to recognize cancer. The engineered cells are then shipped back and infused into the patient. The entire process can take weeks and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Researchers at UC San Francisco have now developed a potential alternative that could allow those cancer-fighting cells to be reprogrammed directly inside the body. If the approach can be translated to people, it could remove much of the manufacturing, expense, and delay that currently limits access to CAR-T therapy.

UMass Chan Medical School scientist Beth McCormick, PhD, and her team collaborated with researchers at the University of Bath to discover how neutrophils, the body's most abundant type of white blood cells, travel to infection sites without damaging healthy tissue. These findings, published in Science Advances, represent a potential new target for anti-inflammatory drugs. "One of the greatest challenges in treating chronic inflammatory disease is preserving the immune system's ability to fight infection while preventing unnecessary tissue damage," said Dr. McCormick,  the Worcester Foundation for Biomedical Research Chair II and chair and professor of microbiology. "By uncovering this molecular navigation system that precisely directs neutrophils to sites of infection, we've identified a promising therapeutic strategy that could restore precision to inflammation rather than simply suppressing it. We believe this represents an important step toward a new generation of targeted anti-inflammatory therapies. "

Case: In a patient diagnosed with metastatic clear cell RCC, foci observed at very low levels on 18F-FDG PET/CT, and some that were not detectable at all, were seen as dramatically dense on [68Ga]Ga-DPI-4452-PET/CT (carbonic anhydrase IX receptor) imaging. Image courtesy of Prof. Arslan Research was presented at the 39th Annual Congress of the European Association of Nuclear Medicine (EANM’26)

RSV IN lung transplant recipients was associated with respiratory failure, declining lung function, and mortality in hospitalized patients. An international multicenter study of 155 adult lung transplant recipients hospitalized with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection identified clinical predictors of severe complications, highlighting the importance of early assessment and continued monitoring in this vulnerable population.