EDITORIALS
- From bench to patient: model systems in drug discovery
Drug Discovery Collection: This Editorial introduces the new DMM Special Collection entitled ‘From bench to patient: model systems in drug discovery’, providing a summary of its contents and highlighting the impact of multiple model systems in moving new discoveries from bench to patient.
- Improving translational studies: lessons from rare neuromuscular diseases
Drug Discovery Collection: This Editorial reviews problems and some solutions to the translational use of animal models in the rare neuromuscular diseases context. This can serve as a model for other disease fields.
A MODEL FOR LIFE
REVIEW
- GEMMs as preclinical models for testing pancreatic cancer therapies
Drug Discovery Collection: This Review discusses GEMMs of human pancreatic cancer, particularly focusing on the KPC model, its use in preclinical research, advantages and disadvantages, and its potential for predicting clinical outcomes.
RESEARCH ARTICLES
- A rapid in vivo screen for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma therapeutics
Editor's choice - Drug Discovery Collection: The study describes a rapid in vivo screen for novel strategies to treat pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA).
- Treatment with a novel oleic-acid–dihydroxyamphetamine conjugation ameliorates non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in obese Zucker rats
Drug Discovery Collection: OLHHA is a safe drug with hepatoprotective and anti-steatotic effects on non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in obese rats.
- Precision-cut kidney slices (PCKS) to study development of renal fibrosis and efficacy of drug targeting ex vivo
Drug Discovery Collection: TGFβ induces renal fibrosis in ex vivo cultured precision-cut kidney slices, which can be attenuated by IFNγ.
- A calixpyrrole derivative acts as an antagonist to GPER, a G-protein coupled receptor: mechanisms and models
Drug Discovery Collection: This paper highlights mechanisms through which a calixpyrrole derivative acts as a newly identified selective antagonist of GPER in different model systems.
- Glycolytic inhibitor 2-deoxyglucose simultaneously targets cancer and endothelial cells to suppress neuroblastoma growth in mice
Drug Discovery Collection: Neuroblastomas are sensitive to treatment with the glycolytic inhibitor 2-deoxyglucose, which can simultaneously target cancer and endothelial cells to suppress tumor growth.
RESOURCE ARTICLE
- From drug response profiling to target addiction scoring in cancer cell models
Drug Discovery Collection: The authors take a pan-cancer approach that provides functional insights into molecular vulnerabilities across various cancer subtypes and patient-specific target addiction patterns that could lead to actionable treatment strategies.
RESEARCH ARTICLES
- Impaired APP activity and altered Tau splicing in embryonic stem cell-derived astrocytes obtained from an APPsw transgenic minipig
Summary: Insight into astrocyte and radial glia pathology in an in vitro culture system derived from the APPsw pig.
- Interplay among Drosophila transcription factors Ets21c, Fos and Ftz-F1 drives JNK-mediated tumor malignancy
Summary: This study provides genetic evidence that malignancy driven by oncogenic Ras and loss of polarity requires transcription factors of three distinct protein families, acting in synergy downstream of JNK signaling.
- OTX2 exhibits cell-context-dependent effects on cellular and molecular properties of human embryonic neural precursors and medulloblastoma cells
Summary: Human embryonic stem cell neural derivatives can be used to model the molecular and cellular properties of medulloblastoma.
- Albumin stimulates renal tubular inflammation through an HSP70-TLR4 axis in mice with early diabetic nephropathy
Summary: Activation of the HSP70-TLR4 axis by albumin in the tubular cell induces tubular inflammation and injury.
- Transient alteration of the vestibular calyceal junction and synapse in response to chronic ototoxic insult in rats
Summary: New forms of damage and repair have been identified in the vestibular sensory epithelium using a rat model of chronic ototoxicity and recovery that causes reversible vestibular dysfunction.
This issue
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Other journals from The Company of Biologists
Editor’s choice – Perturbed development of cranial neural crest cells in association with reduced sonic hedgehog signaling underlies the pathogenesis of retinoic-acid-induced cleft palate
Takashi Yamashiro and colleagues identify the critical role of the retinoic acid-Sonic hedgehog signalling pathway in cranial neural crest and palate development.
A new Resource article by Nguyen et al. describes CFIN, a novel deep learning image analysis platform to assess cardiac function in embryonic zebrafish.
Yuyu Niu and colleagues summarise the history of genome editing in non-human primates and discusses the challenges and prospects of the technology.
Have you seen our interviews with the early-career first authors of our papers? Recently, we caught up with Alexander Akerberg and Jocelyn Wessels.
Travelling Fellowship – New imaging approach unveils a bigger picture
Find out how Pamela Imperadore’s Travelling Fellowship grant from The Company of Biologists took her to Germany, where she used new imaging techniques to investigate the cellular machinery underlying octopus arm regeneration. Don’t miss the next application deadline for 2020 travel, coming up on 29 November. Where will you go?
preLights – HSP110 dependent HSP70 disaggregation machinery mediates prion-like propagation of amyloidogenic proteins in metazoa
Highlighted by Tessa Sinnige, a recent preprint from Carmen Nussbaum-Krammer and co-workers shows that Hsp110 activity protects against amorphous protein aggregation but promotes amyloid aggregation and toxicity in C. elegans models.