Narrow Results

Nuevolution enter drug discovery collaboration with The Institute of Cancer Research and Cancer Research Technology.

Covidien launches advanced medical training and education center in India.

PharmaCell to acquire cell therapy production facility from TiGenix.

University Hospital of Iceland and Kerecis to collaborate on tissue-regeneration research.

AstraZeneca completes the acquisition of Bristol-Myers Squibb share of global diabetes alliance.

Ergomed and Ferrer to develop Lorediplon for insomnia.

Lupus research organizations welcome big-science push to drive new therapies for lupus patients.

AbbVie expands manufacturing presence with US$320 million investment in Singapore.

California Stem Cell partners on CIRM grant to develop transplantable 3D retinas.

Asia's first under-one-roof nutritional research center set up in Singapore.

JAPAN – Study notes widening disease transmission by monkeys.

MALAYSIA – Drug-resistant malaria threatens control programs.

SINGAPORE – Novel gene predicts both breast cancer relapse and response to chemotherapy.

SINGAPORE – New drug formulations to boost fight against respiratory illnesses and antibiotic-resistant superbugs.

SINGAPORE – Zebrafish genes linked to human respiratory diseases.

SINGAPORE – Singapore researchers discover a gene that increases incidence of acute myelogenous leukemia.

SINGAPORE – Scientists develop green tea-based ‘missiles’ to kill cancer cells more effectively.

UNITED STATES – Large study reveals new genetic variants that raise risk for prostate cancer.

UNITED STATES – Math model designed to replace invasive kidney biopsy for lupus patients.

UNITED STATES – Mayo Clinic researchers reveal pathway that contributes to Alzheimer's disease.

UNITED STATES – Immunotherapy combination demonstrates superior anti-cancer activity.

Lupus Research Institute awards $1-million grants to discover what causes lupus.

AstraZeneca and Pharmacyclics enter clinical trial collaborations in oncology.

Singapore — the global launch pad for game-changing clinical trials initiative.

MedImmune strengthens immuno-oncology capabilities with acquisition of Definiens.

AOP Orphan to bring Thromboreductin^® to the Russian market.

PPP launched to improve prevention of women's cancers and quality of cancer registries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

National Heart Research Institute Singapore and Thermo Fisher Scientific team up to further enhance stem cell research techniques.

Felicitex Therapeutics and Selvita initiate strategic collaboration to target cancer quiescence.

WomenHeart launches first campaign to improve quality of life and reduce hospitalizations for women living with heart failure.

President's Science and Technology Awards 2014 honors outstanding scientific talent for their contributions to Singapore's R&D landscape.

China-Germany sci-tech cooperation continue to bring more opportunities.

Study reveals mechanism behind ginger’s warming effect on body.

Doctors in Guangzhou conduct 5G-assisted remote ultrasound scan.

China proposes major changes to pharmaceutical regulations.

Hangzhou attracts RMB1.5 billion investments in bio-pharmaceutical projects.

Genetic testing encouraged to prevent ovarian cancer.

New technology enables large-scale production of artemisinin for malaria.

Shanghai wants to develop top health innovation zone.

New synthetic biology research center launched in Shanghai.

Chinese scientists suggest new thoughts in lupus treatment.

Numerous autoimmune illnesses are not only caused by defects of the immune system but may also be caused by defects in anatomical barriers. Morphologically, most of these barriers consist of basal membranes combined with epithelial cells or, more precisely, their cell membranes. In many organs, these barriers are associated with specialized, phagocytizing cells (e.g. histiocytes, macrophages, microglial cells A and B cells in joints). A collapse of these anatomical barriers caused either by mechanical effects (invasion by micro-organisms) or destructive tumor growth, leads to contact between macrophages and the CD4 lymphocytes, with protein structures of the cell interior. In principle, many intracellular structures should be able to function, on this basis, as potential antigens via MHC II. Contact between intracellular structures and the immune system first leads to a restricted local immune reaction and then to local autoantibody production. In order that a systemic immune reaction can take place, the contact between macrophages, CD4 cells and intracellular structures must occur over a long period and with high intensity. As a desirable, remote target, new clinical therapeutic strategies can be developed from this theory, for example, for patients with cell damage. Examples of such illnesses are, amongst others, cardiac infarcts and strokes as well as accident traumas. An immunosuppressive therapy should reduce the immune reply in all the patients mentioned and thus reduce the volume of the cell damage, giving the patient an advantage.

Examining elevated rates of systemic lupus erythematosus in African-American women from perspectives of immune cognition suggests the disease constitutes an internalized physiological image of external patterns of structured psychosocial stress, a 'pathogenic social hierarchy' involving the synergism of racism and gender discrimination, in the context of policy-driven social disintegration which has particularly affected ethnic minorities in the USA. The disorder represents the punctuated resetting of 'normal' immune self-image to a self-attacking 'excited' state, a process formally analogous to models of punctuated equilibrium in evolutionary theory.

Thus disease onset takes place in the context of a particular immunological 'cognitive module' similar to what has been proposed by evolutionary psychologists for the human mind. Disease progression involves interaction of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, which we also treat as a cognitive physiological submodule, with both immune cognition and an embedding pathogenic social hierarchy, a structured psychosocial stress which literally writes an image of itself on the course of the disorder. Both onset and progression may be stratified by a relation to cyclic physiological responses which are long in comparison with heartbeat period: circadian, hormonal, and annual light/temperature cycles.

The high rate of lupus in African-American women suggests existence of a larger dynamic which entrains powerful as well as subordinate population subgroups, implying that the wide ranging programs of social and economic reform required to cause declines in disease among African-American women will bring significant benefit to all.

Although glucocorticoids (GCs) are the cornerstone for the treatment for systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), they are associated with a number of adverse effects. Recently, an open randomized controlled trial (RCT) conducted in France showed that flares of SLE in 12 months were significantly more common with GCs withdrawal than continuation in stable patients. However, the study did not separately report results on subsets of SLE patients with organ threatening disease such as lupus nephritis (LN). We hereby present a literature review on GCs withdrawal in SLE and propose a protocol for a multicenter RCT in Hong Kong to evaluate the feasibility of withdrawal of low-dose GCs in stable LN patients who are in clinical remission.

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disease with involvement of multiple systems. Despite the therapeutic advances in the past few decades, refractory SLE causing organ damage and life-threatening complications still poses a therapeutic challenge. Therapeutic plasma exchange is considered as one of the rescue therapies used in refractory SLE. However, the level of evidence supporting its use is low. This article reviews the current evidence of the application of plasmapheresis in the treatment of SLE.

Patient empowerment in lupus is a process wherein patients actively participate in decision-making with healthcare professionals and take responsibility for their own condition. In order to effectively be involved in their medical care and achieve the best treatment outcomes, patients have to be equipped with a sufficient body of knowledge and understanding of lupus and its intricacies. Furthermore, the significant roles of families and caregivers, other healthcare professionals and support systems, and policymakers in each country have an immense impact on health outcomes and the overall quality of life.

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a complicated multisystem autoimmune disease that carries substantial mortality and morbidity. The development of new therapies is partly hindered by the lack of a flawless instrument to gauge disease activity in different organs for the primary efficacy outcome. Until a global consensus is reached regarding the most preferred assessment tool, application of any of the existing disease activity indices is acceptable in clinical practice and research. However, one should have a more thorough understanding of the strength and limitations of individual disease activity instruments. This article updates the SLE disease activity indices commonly used in clinical trials and their latest stage of development.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was one of the most important infections in the past few years. Although most cases of COVID-19 are mild, serious complications may arise. The multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS) is a rare but severe, yet poorly understood complication of COVID-19. It was first described in childhood patients with COVID-19 (MIS-C) but is increasingly reported in adults. MIS-A may lead to diagnostic and therapeutic dilemma as its manifestations may mimic a flare of the underlying disease and the use of immunosuppressive therapy may further increase the risk of other infective complications in these patients. However, MIS-A has rarely been reported in patients with pre-existing autoimmune conditions. We hereby present a patient with systemic lupus erythematosus who developed severe MIS-A 6 weeks after a recent SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) has the potential to provide powerful, high-resolution signatures to inform disease prognosis and precision medicine. This paper takes an important first step towards this goal by developing an interpretable machine learning algorithm, CloudPred, to predict individuals’ disease phenotypes from their scRNA-seq data. Predicting phenotype from scRNA-seq is challenging for standard machine learning methods—the number of cells measured can vary by orders of magnitude across individuals and the cell populations are also highly heterogeneous. Typical analysis creates pseudo-bulk samples which are biased toward prior annotations and also lose the single cell resolution. CloudPred addresses these challenges via a novel end-to-end differentiable learning algorithm which is coupled with a biologically informed mixture of cell types model. CloudPred automatically infers the cell subpopulation that are salient for the phenotype without prior annotations. We developed a systematic simulation platform to evaluate the performance of CloudPred and several alternative methods we propose, and find that CloudPred outperforms the alternative methods across several settings. We further validated CloudPred on a real scRNA-seq dataset of 142 lupus patients and controls. CloudPred achieves AUROC of 0.98 while identifying a specific subpopulation of CD4 T cells whose presence is highly indicative of lupus. CloudPred is a powerful new framework to predict clinical phenotypes from scRNA-seq data and to identify relevant cells.