Comment

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Monday

Relapses can become increasingly severe, requiring many patients to cycle through an array of treatments including chemotherapy, stem-cell transplants, and various immunotherapies.

Teclistamab belongs to a newer class of immunotherapy drugs, bispecific antibodies, that can simultaneously bind to two different targets. It works by linking the body's T cells with specific proteins found on myeloma cells, thus helping the immune system identify and fight the cancer.

Although teclistamab is still relatively new, it has yielded results that rival or even surpass those of existing treatments.

In one recent study, patients with relapsed multiple myeloma who received teclistamab survived longer and stayed in remission longer than patients who received standard therapies.

After 18 months, nearly 70 percent of teclistamab recipients showed no disease progression, versus about 27 percent of subjects given conventional treatment.
Yet while teclistamab has shown clinical promise in patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma, "the durability of disease control remains limited in this advanced-disease setting," the authors of the newer paper write.
Teclistamab induced a complete response – the disappearance of all cancer markers following treatment – in 77.8 percent of patients, the study found, compared with 0 percent in patients treated with Rd.
At a median follow-up of 24.5 months, the rate of survival without disease progression was 92 percent among patients who received teclistamab and 49 percent among those given Rd.

"Overall, response rates, duration of response, and time to progression were significantly improved in teclistamab compared to Rd," the researchers write.

While further research is needed, these findings point to teclistamab as a "highly active immune-interception strategy" for HR-SMM, they add.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-026-04642-w

Part 2

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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Monday

A Drug Wiped Out All Cancer Markers in 78% of High-Risk Patients – Before They Even Got Cancer
A new clinical trial reveals intriguing results about a potential treatment for high-risk smoldering multiple myeloma, a pre-cancerous bone marrow condition that brings an elevated risk of multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer.

The study focuses on teclistamab, a monoclonal antibody already used for treating later stages of multiple myeloma – namely once a patient has relapsed after initial treatments, or once the disease has become refractory, meaning it's resistant to previously effective therapies.

Teclistamab was approved in both the European Union and the United States in 2022 to treat relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) identified it as a first-in-class drug.

Multiple myeloma develops in plasma cells, a category of white blood cells that play key roles in the adaptive immune system. Under normal circumstances, plasma cells produce proteins called antibodies that help us fight infections.
In multiple myeloma, however, abnormal plasma cells appear in the bone marrow and churn out abnormal antibodies known as myeloma proteins.
Symptoms can be sparse and subtle in the early stages, potentially delaying diagnosis.

As the cancer progresses, it may reveal itself via complications such as bone weakness, kidney damage, anemia, hypercalcemia, and increased vulnerability to infections.

About 188,000 new cases of multiple myeloma were diagnosed globally in 2022, and an estimated 121,000 deaths were attributed to the disease.

Multiple myeloma is treatable, although treatments may become less effective over time, resulting in relapse. New patients often take a combination of drugs such as daratumumab, dexamethasone, or lenalidomide.
Part 1

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Monday

​How metformin works
Metformin, primarily used to treat or prevent type 2 diabetes, is one of the most prescribed drugs, but how it works has been something of a mystery. In a recent study, researchers discovered that the drug essentially transforms a person’s gut cells into a sugar sink, resulting in lowered levels of glucose in the blood. The mechanism: At high-enough levels, metformin blocks oxygen use in the mitochondria, prompting gut cells to switch to a different metabolic pathway that uses much more sugar to produce energy.

Why this is interesting: The result is counterintuitive. Who would expect that blocking oxygen use in mitochondria, essentially inhibiting the body’s power centers, could end up enhancing health? A 1989 study was on the right track, but it was long overlooked. At the time, French metabolic researcher Jean Girard and his colleagues described how metformin increased the amount of glucose absorbed in the intestines of rats.
The broader lesson is that inhibiting mitochondria may be beneficial when it is done in the right cells, for the right amount of time, without exposing the whole body to the broad toxicity of a mitochondrial inhibitor.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s42255-026-01530-y

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Sunday

A 3-year-old boy with malignant liver cancer has experienced complete disease regression after receiving an experimental treatment.

The immunotherapy technique took the patient's own immune cells and turned them into potent cancer hunters.

It’s called Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T cell therapy, or CAR T therapy for short.

But while it’s shown great promise for blood cancers, solid tumors are harder to penetrate.

This new case is a success story.

The young boy received two doses of an experimental treatment that was made from his own T cells.

After 12 months, the boy was still disease-free.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMc2605958

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Sunday

The revival of bacterial drug delivery
To minimize the off-target effects of cancer therapies, researchers need to find ways to deliver drugs to tumours accurately. Some species of bacteria are attracted to the low-oxygen environment in tumours, which makes them ideal candidates to shuttle drugs directly to their target. Results from early clinical trials that used Salmonella to deliver the immunotherapy IL-2 in people with pancreatic cancer were positive. But many bacterial cancer-delivery systems trialled in the 2000s and 2010s failed — a long shadow that could be hard for new treatments to step out of.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-02657-4?utm_source=Live+...

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Not all antimicrobials are antibiotics Several common pharmaceuticals and agricultural chemicals can have antibacterial properties despite not being classified as antibiotics. The antimicrobial activity of these compounds can disrupt the gut microbiome, which has knock-on effects for both infectious and non-communicable diseases. A detailed understanding of these interactions “could transform how we assess drug safety and efficacy”, write microbiome researchers Jacobo de la Cuesta-Zuluaga, Kiran Patil and Lisa Maier in their review. “Incorporating microbiome-based assays into drug development and environmental toxicity testing might uncover both hidden risks and untapped therapeutic potential.”

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41575-026-01258-w.epdf?sharing_tok...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Sunday

Anthropic report sparks AI bioweapon fear
Last week, artificial-intelligence company Anthropic released a report that revealed five attempts by scientists in unnamed countries outside the United States to use the chatbot Claude to conduct “concerning” research into harmful viruses and toxins. The cases are suspicious because the scientists found workarounds to Claude’s inbuilt restrictions that block such requests, and could suggest the use of the chatbot to design bioweapons, the company says. Some researchers say that Anthropic overreacted, but biosecurity specialists say that the report highlights the potential for AI to be misused in biology.

https://www.anthropic.com/threat-intelligence-report-september-2026...

‘Chilling’ warning or overreaction? AI bioweapons report divides experts

Anthropic describes five cases where scientists in unnamed countries tried to use its Claude software for potentially nefarious work on viruses or toxins

https://www.science.org/content/article/chilling-warning-or-overrea...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Sunday

Scientists treat bleached corals with bacteria as oceans heat up

Coral reefs are under growing heat stress, but a new field test suggests researchers may have another tool to help them cope.

Coral probiotics succeed in real-world trial
One of the first real-world tests of coral probiotics shows that the treatment can help the organisms withstand a marine heatwave. Researchers found that treating heat-stressed Acropora cf. valida corals with a mixture of four or six bacterial strains isolated from healthy corals helped keep algae alive in the organism’s tissues. This enabled them to continue photosynthesizing as normal and prevented bleaching. Four-strain mixtures still had a beneficial effect if the bacteria were dead, which suggests the treatment could be delivered as a postbiotic by restoration crews.

Live probiotics and inactivated postbiotics protect corals during a heatwave • Treatment preserved photosynthetic efficiency in bleached corals in situ • Beneficial and treatment-derived bacteria were enriched in treated corals • Microbiome and metabolomic profiles showed treatment-specific signatures

https://www.cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247(26)00917-4?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS2211124726009174%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

https://www.earth.com/environment/coral-probiotics-heatwave/?utm_so...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on Sunday

Infections send protectors from gut to brain
Immune cells that fight stomach bugs can migrate from the gut to the brain, where they establish a lasting ‘memory’ of previous infection, according to a study in mice. After an infection, gut-trained T cells journey to the meninges, a protective membrane that shields the brain. Once there, the cells become residents that can respond to later infections. The findings could shed light on how gut infections might affect neurological disorders, and could help to develop therapies that harness the relationship between the gut and the central nervous system.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-026-02428-4?utm_source=Live+...

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-02891-w?utm_source=Live+...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 19, 2026 at 12:25pm

To read 2,000-year-old burned scrolls, scientists burn their own
Carbonized model papyrus scrolls written with lead-containing ink showed that X-ray CT can distinguish ink from charred papyrus, with lead producing up to 25-fold greater X-ray absorption. Lead levels as low as 25 µg/cm2 were detectable by CT and handheld X-ray fluorescence. Screening ancient scrolls for lead could improve noninvasive virtual unrolling and text recovery.

Douglas Seiler et al, A model carbonized papyrus scroll opens a novel path to identifying readable scrolls of the Herculaneum Library, PLOS One (2026). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0353485

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 19, 2026 at 11:11am

When the infants turned 1, researchers tested them for egg and peanut allergies at major children's hospitals. Each baby first got a skin-prick test. If that came back positive, they moved on to a food challenge, where doctors watched closely as the baby ate small amounts of scrambled egg or peanut butter to confirm whether a true allergy was present.

A high-allergen maternal diet during pregnancy and lactation did not result in a significantly lower risk of infants developing an egg or peanut allergy. When the researchers looked at allergy outcomes, 7.8% of infants whose mothers ate more eggs and peanuts developed an egg or peanut allergy, compared with 8.4% in the comparison group.

Egg allergy occurred in 6.2% of infants in the high-intake group versus 7.2% in the standard group, while peanut allergy rates were identical at 2.6% in both groups. Eczema rates were also comparable between the two groups.
The results make it clear that adding extra eggs and peanuts to a pregnancy diet does not protect a baby from developing allergies to them. Going forward, the focus should be on evidence-based infant feeding guidance rather than asking mothers to take on another dietary burden.

Debra J. Palmer et al, Trial of a Maternal Diet Rich in Eggs and Peanuts to Reduce Infant Allergy, New England Journal of Medicine (2026). DOI: 10.1056/nejmoa2605659

Maria C. Jenmalm, Maternal Allergen Consumption and Infant Food Allergy — Reassurance, Not Prescription, New England Journal of Medicine (2026). DOI: 10.1056/nejme2610158

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