Contents
18 April 2018
Vol 10, Issue 437
Vol 10, Issue 437
Focus
- Cholesterol, cancer, and rebooting a treatment for athlete’s foot
A key enzyme in cholesterol synthesis is placed firmly on the oncogenic map and demonstrated to be a potential therapeutic target in liver cancer by repurposing a common antifungal agent (Liu et al., this issue).
Research Articles
- Squalene epoxidase drives NAFLD-induced hepatocellular carcinoma and is a pharmaceutical target
Squalene epoxidase is a therapeutic target in hepatocellular carcinoma arising from nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.
- Synthetic biology-based cellular biomedical tattoo for detection of hypercalcemia associated with cancer
A biomedical tattoo composed of cells engineered to express a calcium-sensing receptor coupled to visible melanin production detects hypercalcemia.
- CD32 is expressed on cells with transcriptionally active HIV but does not enrich for HIV DNA in resting T cells
CD32 is associated with highly activated T cells harboring HIV RNA transcripts and does not enrich for HIV DNA in resting T cells.
- Systemic administration of the antisense oligonucleotide NS-065/NCNP-01 for skipping of exon 53 in patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy
NS-065/NCNP-01, an antisense oligonucleotide that enables exon 53 skipping in the dystrophin gene, showed a favorable safety profile and promising pharmacokinetics in 10 patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy.
Editors' Choice
- Shaking up cellular therapy
Stem cell preparation technique determines the outcome of transplant therapy for myocardial infarction.
- An epigenetic target for autism
A transient 3-day course of treatment with a histone deacetylase inhibitor persistently rescues atypical social behavior in a Shank3-deficiency mouse model of autism.
- A (synthetic) lethal weapon for cancer
ROS1 inhibition in E-cadherin–deficient tumors leads to synthetic lethality, which could be exploited for the selective treatment of breast cancer patients.
About The Cover
ONLINE COVER Squelching Squalene Stalls Cancer. Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, exemplified by the liver shown in this image, is typically associated with obesity and is becoming increasingly common. A particularly dreaded complication of this disease is liver cancer, which is difficult to treat. By examining the role of cholesterol in the evolution of this condition, Liu et al. identified the contribution of squalene epoxidase, an enzyme involved in cholesterol metabolism. The authors showed that terbinafine, a common antifungal drug, can target squalene epoxidase and prevent progression to cancer in mouse models of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. [CREDIT: CNRI/SCIENCE SOURCE]