Axonal Damage Identified as a Key Driver in Glioblastoma Development
Journal: Nature
Author: Clements, M., Tang, W., Florjanic Baronik, Z. et al., UK/ USA
A recent study highlights axonal injury as a key driver of glioblastoma (GBM) development. Early tumour cells expand in white matter, triggering Wallerian degeneration – a process of axonal death – that fuels neuroinflammation and tumour growth. Blocking SARM1, the enzyme mediating this degeneration, slowed disease progression and extended survival in mice. These findings suggest that targeting the tumour-induced injury microenvironment could help intercept GBM at earlier, more treatable stages.
MARQO: An Open-Source Pipeline for Single-Cell Tissue Analysis
Journal: Nature Biomedical Engineering
Author: Buckup, M., Figueiredo, I., Ioannou, G. et al., USA
Multiplex immunostaining is powerful but often fragmented, time-consuming, and difficult to scale. Researchers have now developed MARQO – an open-source, automated pipeline for single-cell resolution analysis of whole-slide tissue images. MARQO combines image registration, nuclear segmentation, unsupervised clustering, and user-guided classification in a single workflow. Validated across diverse cancers and tissue types, it successfully identified CD8+ T cell enrichment in liver cancer patients responding to immunotherapy. By simplifying and standardizing multiplex tissue analysis, MARQO offers a robust tool to uncover in situ mechanisms and accelerate cancer research.
Organoids at the Forefront of Digestive Cancer Therapy
Journal: Molecular Cancer
Author: Wang, Y., Zhang, L., Wang, L.Z. et al., China / Singapore
Digestive cancers remain among the deadliest worldwide, with treatment resistance posing a major barrier. Patient-derived cancer organoids (PDCOs) – 3D mini-tumors grown from patient samples – are transforming personalized oncology by enabling predictive drug testing across chemotherapy, radiotherapy, targeted therapy, and immunotherapy. While challenges remain, such as incomplete tumor microenvironments and time-intensive processing, advances in AI, organ-on-chip, and 3D bioprinting are accelerating progress. Clinical trials are now testing PDCOs for guiding real-time treatment decisions, offering a path toward more precise, patient-tailored therapies.
Decoding Recombinase Dynamics Across Bacterial Growth Phases
Journal: Narture, Scientific Reports
Author: Gonzalez-Colell, M., Macia, J., Spain
Recombinases – key enzymes for gene therapy, transgenic models, and synthetic biology – show activity patterns that depend on bacterial growth phase. A new study using E. coli and the Bxb1 recombinase found that recombination efficiency increases quasi-linearly with enzyme concentration during exponential growth, then persists into stationary phase even as gene expression declines. Interestingly, cells that recombine in stationary phase perform better when they return to growth. The findings suggest that timing induction just before stationary phase can boost recombination efficiency while reducing expression demands – an approach that could help optimize synthetic genetic circuits.
