Time: 8AM PST | 11AM EST | 5PM CET
Date: January 25, 2024
Title: siRNA therapy for ex vivo treatment of stem cell grafts and/or donor lymphocytes
Description:
Allogeneic T cells represent the most potent treatment for hematopoietic malignancies such es leukemia. However, after interaction with host antigen-presenting cells, T cells can lead to the unwanted Graft-versus-Host Disease (GvHD) or the desired Graft-versus-Leukemia (GvL) effect. In contrast to currently available GvHD drugs, not being able to differentiate between GvH and GvL, we want to change the phenotype of T cells using siRNAs to prevent development of GvHD, while preserving GvL. Here, we show a siRNA mix inhibiting different target genes as a therapeutic concept. The siRNA mix holds promise to prevent GvH while preserving GvL effect of T cells and is the first proof-of-principle for siRNA therapy to modulate GvHD.
Speaker:
Title: A global search for high-susceptibility targets of programmable RNA antibiotics
Description:
The growing emergence of multidrug-resistant bacterial pathogens urgently demands the development of alternative antibiotics. Antisense oligomers (ASOs), such as based on peptide nucleic acid (PNA), can exert potent bactericidal effects when designed to sequester the ribosome binding site of an mRNA of an essential gene. While various essential genes have been investigated for their vulnerability to PNA targeting
in enteric bacteria, it remains unknown what makes for a potent PNA or PNA target. The systematic investigation of the efficacy of antisense PNAs for 293 selected essential genes, tested in both E. coli K12 and uropathogenic E. coli (UPEC), provides new insights into sequence- and target gene-dependent differences in PNA susceptibility and gives information on putative universal predictors of PNA efficacy.
