Interrogating the immune-modulating roles of radiation therapy for a rational combination with immune-checkpoint inhibitors in treating pancreatic cancer.

Background: Radiation therapy (RT) has the potential to enhance the efficacy of immunotherapy, such as checkpoint inhibitors, which has dramatically altered the landscape of treatments for many cancers, but not yet for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). Our prior studies demonstrated that PD ligand-1 and indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase 1 (IDO1) were induced on tumor epithelia of PDACs following neoadjuvant therapy including RT, suggesting RT may prime PDAC for PD-1 blockade antibody (αPD-1) or IDO1 inhibitor (IDO1i) treatments. In this study, we investigated the antitumor efficacy of the combination therapies with radiation and PD-1 blockade or IDO1 inhibition or both.

Chloride Ion Transport by the CLC Cl/H Antiporter: A Combined Quantum-Mechanical and Molecular-Mechanical Study.

We performed steered molecular dynamics (SMD) and umbrella sampling simulations of Cl ion migration through the transmembrane domain of a prototypical CLC Cl/H antiporter by employing combined quantum-mechanical (QM) and molecular-mechanical (MM) calculations. The SMD simulations revealed interesting conformational changes of the protein. While no large-amplitude motions of the protein were observed during pore opening, the side chain rotation of the protonated external gating residue Glu148 was found to be critical for full access of the channel entrance by Cl.