Publication highlights

Stem cell numbers in the hippocampus of young adults stabilise due to coordinated changes in stem cell behaviour which ensures lifelong hippocampal neurogenesis, according to new research from the Guillemot lab.

This paper shows how temporal information in the zebrafish embryo is transformed into a spatial pattern. We demonstrate how the Nodal signalling gradient is formed in the early zebrafish embryo and show that its size and shape are determined by a temporal signal activation window created by a microRNA-mediated delay in the translation of Lefty, a Nodal antagonist. This paper was important as it not only challenged the long-held view in the field that the Nodal gradient was formed by a reaction–diffusion mechanism, but highlighted the importance of signalling duration in gradient formation.

Using a combination of structural biology, genome editing, and biochemistry, a new study from the Hill lab showed that Shprintzen–Goldberg syndrome is associated with an attenuation of TGF-β-induced transcriptional responses, and not enhancement, as previously predicted.

This paper provides strong evidence that “atypical” B cells are short-lived activated B cells, and are probably the result of chronic stimulation and not the cause of chronic malaria. This questions the commonly held view that atypical B cells are evidence of an aberrant or defective response in malaria.

The priming signals in sterile chronic inflammatory diseases remained elusive. Moreover, NETs were mostly thought to serve as an antimicrobial defence mechanism. This work showed that NETs are proinflammatory and provide the priming signals for inflammation in atherosclerosis. It has important implications for our understanding of the mechanisms driving many inflammatory conditions and the important amplification mechanisms involving neutrophil-macrophage crosstalk.

The paper was a broad collaboration with a team from one of our Partner Institutions and others, and illustrates how our learning from insights in the PKC field, here concerning kinase nucleotide pocket occupation, can impact our understanding of the broader kinome. Specifically the work demonstrates that the pseudokinase HER3 which is upregulated in cancer and drug resistance settings, undergoes essential nucleotide pocket occupation dependent changes in conformation to drive HER2 partner dependent signalling. Of importance clinically, the paper offers a route to small molecule-based intervention and also raises questions of inhibitor liability associated with HER3.

A study led by Rickie Patani has identified the trigger of a key cellular change in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a type of motor neurone disease. The findings could help develop new treatments for many neurological diseases with the same change, including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

We demonstrated aberrant intron retention in ALS-causing mutations. This is the first description of abnormal intron retention in ALS. The most significantly retained intron in is the SFPQ transcript, which 'drags' SFPQ protein out of the nucleus. SFPQ nuclear loss is a new universal molecular hallmark of ALS across iPSC, mouse models and in sporadic ALS post-mortem tissue.

Immune cells such as type 1 conventional dendritic cells (cDC1) can “eat” (phagocytose) dead tumour or virally-infected cells and present associated antigens to CD8+ T cells to elicit a tumour- or virus-specific cytotoxic T cell response. How antigens from the debris get presented on MHC class I (MHC-I) molecules on cDC1 has long been puzzling as MHC-I normally presents antigens found in the cytosol. This paper shows that cDC1 use the DNGR-1 receptor to induce phagosomal rupture, releasing the debris-associated antigens into the cytosol. These findings have implications for our understanding and manipulation of immunity to infection and cancer.

In this paper we showed that cDC1 recruitment and infiltration in several mouse tumour models depends on the chemokines CCL5 and XCL1 produced by NK cells. In human cancers, CCL5/XCL chemokine transcripts correlate with gene signatures for NK cells and cDC1 and predict overall survival in melanoma, head and neck cancer, breast cancer and lung adenocarcinoma. Therefore, our data uncovered a mechanism for cDC1 recruitment into tumours that is translatable to humans and cancer patient survival.

In this paper, we uncovered a potent mechanism of cancer immune evasion, namely cyclooxygenase (COX)-dependent secretion of prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) by tumour cells. We further showed that the growth of PGE2-secreting tumours in mice can be reversed by a combination of checkpoint blockade immunotherapy and COX inhibitors, suggesting that COX inhibition might be a useful addition to both conventional and immune-based therapy of cancer. This paper led to seven clinical trials worldwide to test combinations of prostaglandin E2 inhibition with checkpoint blockade cancer therapies.

Research from the Scaffidi lab has developed a new strategy to identify cancer-specific vulnerabilities. They identified a group of proteins, called the male-specific lethal (MSL) acetyltransferase complex, which could be used to increase chromosomal instability in cancer cells without inducing severe adverse effects in normal tissues.

Animals engage actively with their environment, yet how active sampling strategies impact neural activity was unknown. We showed that mice adapt sniffing during learning in a way that enhances neuronal representation. Furthermore, this work resolves a long-standing conundrum that seemingly non-olfactory information is prominently represented in the OB: context influences sniffing, which in turn changes neural activity.