The first kidney transplantation in an HIV positive recipient in Slovakia.

Patients infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) have long been considered unsuitable candidates for solid organ transplantation due to their poor prognosis. After the introduction of combination antiretroviral therapy, the survival of this group of patients improved significantly. HIV positive patients had been successfully transplanted for the last 18 years.

Interleukin-15-armoured GPC3 CAR T cells for patients with solid cancers.

Interleukin-15 (IL-15) promotes the survival of T lymphocytes and enhances the antitumour properties of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells in preclinical models of solid neoplasms in which CAR T cells have limited efficacy. Glypican-3 (GPC3) is expressed in a group of solid cancers, and here we report the evaluation in humans of the effects of IL-15 co-expression on GPC3-expressing CAR T cells (hereafter GPC3 CAR T cells). Cohort 1 patients ( NCT02905188 and NCT02932956 ) received GPC3 CAR T cells, which were safe but produced no objective antitumour responses and reached peak expansion at 2 weeks.

Lessons learned from 20 years of preclinical testing in pediatric cancers.

Programs for preclinical testing of targeted cancer agents in murine models of childhood cancers have been supported by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) since 2004. These programs were established to work collaboratively with industry partners to address the paucity of targeted agents for pediatric cancers compared with the large number of agents developed and approved for malignancies primarily affecting adults. The distinctive biology of pediatric cancers and the relatively small numbers of pediatric cancer patients are major challenges for pediatric oncology drug development.

A proteogenomic surfaceome study identifies DLK1 as an immunotherapeutic target in neuroblastoma.

Cancer immunotherapies produce remarkable results in B cell malignancies; however, optimal cell surface targets for many solid cancers remain elusive. Here, we present an integrative proteomic, transcriptomic, and epigenomic analysis of tumor and normal tissues to identify biologically relevant cell surface immunotherapeutic targets for neuroblastoma, an often-fatal childhood cancer. Proteogenomic analyses reveal sixty high-confidence candidate immunotherapeutic targets, and we prioritize delta-like canonical notch ligand 1 (DLK1) for further study.