Advanced Therapies Congress 2023

ExCeL centre, London, 14-15 March, 2023   On the 14th and 15th of March 2023, PMM team members Atiyeh Razavi, Isabela Garcia Pleijlar, and Clotilde Vazquez attended the Advanced Therapies Congress held at the London ExCeL. The Advanced Therapies Congress explored, defined, and attempted to tackle the main challenges currently being faced when it comes […]

Prostate cancer research: Latest advances

Tala Elremmash   Glossary: Brachytherapy, BRCA genes, Digital Rectal Examination (DRE), External Beam Radiation Therapy (EBRT), ExoDx Prostate (EPI), 68Ga-PSMA-11, Gleason Score, High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU), Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT), 4Kscore Test, Multiparametric Magnetic Resonance Imaging (mpMRI), PCA3, Prostatic Intraepithelial Neoplasia (PIN), Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA), Prostate-specific Membrane Antigen Positron Emission Tomography (PSMA-PET), Stereotactic […]

Advanced Therapies Europe 2022

    On the 31st August and 1st September, 2022, PMM volunteer and team member, Rithika Ganesh, attended the annual Advanced Therapies Europe Conference which was held at the Royal Lancaster hotel in London, United Kingdom. The Advanced Therapies Europe 2022 conference focused on exploring the commercialization of advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMPs), with talks […]

What is Digital Health and how is it revolutionizing healthcare?

Olivia Crossley   Keywords Arrhythmia, Artificial intelligence, Blood Pressure, Consultant, Digital health, Electrodes, EEG, ECG, FDA, Machine Learning, Side effects, Telemedicine, Ultrasound, UK’s General Data Protection Regulation, Wearable technologies Digital technologies are electronic devices that analyze and store different kinds of information. These technologies have revolutionized how we communicate, learn, and shop. Now, digital devices […]

What is phage therapy and could it be used as an alternative to antibiotics?

  Sam Jarada   Glossary bactericidal, bacteriostatic, capsid, cell wall, DNA gyrase, dosage, dysentery, efficacy, enzyme, microbiome, lipid, lysis, lytic, nucleic acid, pathogenic, placebo, RNA, transcription, translation Introduction Phage therapy is a type of treatment that makes use of bacteriophages (phages), (a type of virus that only infect bacteria). Phages are composed of a nucleic […]

Genomics: The Advent of Preventative Medicine?

Olivia Crossley   Glossary Amniocentesis, Cell, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis,  Chorionic villus sampling,  Chromosome, COVID-19, CRISPR-Cas9,  Cystic fibrosis, DNA, Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, Etiology, Familial Hypercholesterolemia, Gene, Genetic Counselling, Genetic Testing, Hemophilia, Leopard syndrome, Mucopolysaccharidosis type I,  Noncoding DNA, Parkinson’s disease, Pharmacogenomics, Phenylketonuria, Precision Medicine, Prenatal testing,  Severe Combined Immunodeficiency Disorder, Spinal Muscular Atrophy   What is […]

COVID-19: How will testing and vaccines have to adapt to new variants?

Joana Vidigueira   Glossary Antibody, Antigen, Antigen-presenting Cell, B cell, Booster, Clinical Trial, COVID-19, Dendritic Cell, Deoxyribonucleic Acid, Epidemiology, Helper T-cell, Host Cell, Immunity, Immune Response, Killer T-cell, Lymph Node, Macrophage, Mutation, Ribonucleic acid, RT-PCR, SARS-CoV-2, Vaccine, Variant, Virus Abbreviations SARS: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, CoV: coronavirus, MERS: Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome, DNA: deoxyribonucleic acid, […]

What is CAR-T cell therapy?

Seema Bachoo   Immunotherapy is a type of cancer treatment that makes use of a patient’s own immune system to target and destroy cancer cells, with the aim of eliminating cancer from the body. There are several different types of immunotherapies. Cytokine-based immunotherapies harness the power of cytokines, which are soluble proteins that stimulate and […]

Pharmacogenomics: The future of medicine?

Celeste Cohen           Picture credit: National Human Genome Research Institute         Note: All terms shown in bold are defined in the glossary at the end of the article. Defining Pharmacogenomics From chemotherapy to HIV drugs, the past century has seen rapid advances in medical innovation, which have given rise to a wide range […]

How immunotherapy can improve colorectal cancer prognosis

Aaron Logsdon   Abbreviations CAR, chimeric antigen receptor; CAR-T, chimeric antigen receptor T lymphocyte therapy; CRC, colorectal cancer; DCR, disease control rate; dMMR, mismatch repair-deficient; FDA, US Food and Drug Administration; ICI, immune checkpoint inhibition; MMR, mismatch repair genes; MSI-H, high microsatellite instability; MSS, microsatellite stable; OR, objective response; pMMR, mismatch repair proficient; Treg, T […]