Author: Healthcare Propulsion Staff

Children’s Hospital Colorado’s Allergy and Immunology Center today launched its Sublingual Immunotherapy Program at its Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, expanding treatment options for children with certain food allergies. Eligible patients now have access to this ongoing therapy, which helps build tolerance to up to 10 food allergens through daily liquid drops developed by Top9Proteins. Patients enrolled in the program receive small, carefully controlled doses of allergen under the tongue during four supervised visits at Children’s Colorado’s Food Challenge and Research Unit. Families are then transitioned to daily at-home therapy, where a consistent regimen may gradually build tolerance and provide…

Researchers at Helmholtz Munich, the Heidelberg Faculty of Medicine at Heidelberg University, the German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD) and the Technical University of Munich (TUM), have identified a previously unknown mechanism that can drive cancer cachexia – a wasting process in the body that primarily affects muscle and fat tissue. A central role is played by a protein secreted by tumors, known as ADAMTSL4: It locally activates the TGF-β signaling pathway in muscle and fat tissue, thereby triggering a catabolic program. The findings identify ADAMTSL4 as a potential new target for future therapies against cancer cachexia. The researchers publish…

The crazed knife-wielding woman who stabbed two people near Times Square long struggled with her mental health, but the mom of three showed no sign she’d go murderously berserk, her stunned brother said Tuesday. Pamela Cisneros, 49, seemingly lived a normal life in the days before she fatally knifed a woman and seriously wounded a man during a terrifying random attack Monday, said her brother Patrick Peralta, 59. “She never showed any aggressiveness or being violent. I don’t know what happened,” Peralta, 59, told The Post. Patrick Cisneros — brother of Pamela Cisneros who fatally stabbed a woman and injured…

Digital health company Solera Health is expanding its weight management network in a newly announced partnership with Noom. The partnership will bring two programs to Solera’s network: GLP-1 companion program Noom Weight and the Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP). The DPP is U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Full Plus-recognized, according to the Sept. 1 announcement. Noom will also add a GLP-1 companion program to the network at no extra costs to members through the collaboration. “Every addition to our network must clear a high bar, and Noom has done so with its strength of evidence,” said Kris Heinzen,…

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) awarded $77 million in grants Monday geared toward strengthening substance use prevention and treatment and community mental health. The grants were funded through HHS’ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Initiatives supported by the grants include those to strengthen substance use prevention, treatment and recovery, community mental health, suicide prevention and crisis services. SAMHSA Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Christopher Carroll said in a statement prevention efforts are “the foundation of a strong behavioral health system.” “More than $22 million of these awards will help states, tribes, and communities prevent substance…

The woman police shot and killed in Times Square Monday afternoon after she allegedly fatally stabbed one person and injured another had been experiencing mental health struggles for years, her brother said. But he said she recently seemed to be doing better.And Patrick Peralta, 59, said he’d never known his younger sister Pamela Cisneros, 49, to become violent because of her mental health difficulties. Police have confirmed she had a “documented mental health history” with the department involving incidents in 2018 and 2019, but haven’t provided further details.Peralta said he last saw Cisneros in early August for their stepfather’s birthday…

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has tasked scientists with developing a system that can receive instructions and synthesize a sequence of DNA or RNA without any chemical input. Think wireless DNA printer.The agency chose UC Santa Barbara’s Max Wilson to lead the winning proposal. His team, LUXCODE, includes researchers at four universities, and DARPA has committed $1.7 million to launch the initiative over the first nine months, with potentially tens of millions more based on the team’s progress. They aim to develop a nucleic acid compiler, or NAC, in a living cell. Lean, agile, bespoke and so much…

A new form of proton therapy-designed to deliver cancer-killing radiation therapy in less than a second, through fewer total sessions, with potentially less risk of damaging side effects-is now being tested in a Phase I clinical trial at the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania. Known as FLASH proton therapy, the feasibility study represents the first time that the “conformal,” or precise 3D targeting, version of the technique has been tested in human patients in the United States. The study will enroll 10 patients whose head and neck cancer has returned after previous radiation treatment and who are…

A drug that targets the host rather than the virus could get around the problem of anti-viral resistance. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people die of seasonal influenza, caused by infection with influenza A and B viruses. Influenza viruses evolve quickly, often staying one step ahead in the arms race between viruses and antiviral drugs. An alternative approach is to instead target the host, disrupting the machinery that the virus appropriates to replicate itself. Kyoung-Oh Cho and colleagues tested two drugs: AGM-380d, a dimer, and AGM-380t, a tetramer. Both drugs bind to nucleolin, a jack-of-all-trades phosphoprotein mostly found in…

A Rutgers-led international collaboration has identified 36 genes that substantially raise the risk for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and chronic tic disorders – providing what two researchers said is the most detailed biological understanding of how these conditions develop – and how they might eventually be treated. Before this study, published in Nature Neuroscience, scientists had found a few genetic clues, each linked separately to OCD or chronic tic disorders. Gary Heiman, a professor in the Department of Genetics in the Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences and a senior coauthor of the study, said the research “dramatically expands the catalog…