#Developing Rapidly

[colinwilson11]

Global Adoption Of TIL Therapy Sparks New Treatment Frontier

Tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) therapy has shown immense promise in fighting various cancers by harnessing the body’s own immune system. The approach involves extracting immune cells from a patient’s own tumor tissue, expanding them extensively in the lab, and infusing the cells back into the patient to induce an anti-tumor immune response. Despite being in clinical use for over a decade, the broader adoption of TIL therapy has been limited due to its complex manufacturing process. However, recent technological advances and new large-scale clinical trial results are accelerating global interest in this cell therapy.

Streamlining Manufacturing For Scalability

One of the key hurdles in making Global TIL Therapy more widely available has been the labor-intensive and time-consuming process of extracting, expanding and preparing the personalized T cells. It involved manually isolating lymphocyte cells from each patient’s surgically removed tumor sample followed by 2-4 weeks of expansion using interleukin-2 in specialized laboratories. This made it challenging and expensive to produce at a scale needed to serve many cancer patients. However, companies are now developing standardized protocols and automated manufacturing solutions using closed systems bioreactors to streamline the process. This could potentially bring down the costs and turnaround times to offer it in regional cancer centers within weeks instead of months for each patient.

Positive Clinical Outcomes Driving Adoption

Early phase clinical trials of it in melanoma patients produced response rates exceeding 50% which were unprecedented for any cancer treatment at that time. More recently, positive results from large multi-center trials like the C-144-01 study are encouraging clinicians and drug regulators. The study of over 100 patients with metastatic melanoma showed an overall response rate of about 40% with over 20% achieving a complete response even after failing other immunotherapies. Such reliable and durable clinical benefits compared to other options are driving more oncologists to consider TIL therapy for suitable melanoma patients. Its adoption for treating other cancers like lung and breast is also gaining pace based on ongoing combination therapy trials. 

New Cell Therapy Production Centers

With further validation anticipated from ongoing studies, major pharma companies are increasingly collaborating with cell therapy production startups to develop off-the-shelf TIL therapy products. Companies are partnering to set up regional cell therapy manufacturing facilities to produce TILs at an industrial scale. For instance, Gilead Life Sciences is establishing 6 cell therapy centers in the US and Europe over the next 3 years with an initial goal of treating 1000 cancer patients annually with it produced at each center. Likewise, Bristol-Myers Squibb is investing $900 million to build cell therapy manufacturing plants in the US and China through development deals with its producers like Nektar Therapeutics. Such large-scale commercialization efforts are expected to make this personalized immunotherapy approach more accessible to global cancer patients within the next 5 years.

Regulatory Pathways Emerging

Despite the promise, an important hurdle for TIL Therapy adoption has been the unclear regulatory approval pathways. With increasing evidence, drug authorities across major s are now providing clearer guidelines. For example, the US FDA granted Regeneron and Erasmus MC University ‘Breakthrough Therapy Designation’ in 2020 for their TIL therapy in treating metastatic cervical cancer based on early positive outcomes. Likewise, the EMA accepted Erasmus MC University’s filing for priority medicines designation and provided recommendations on the approval pathway. Such endorsement of it as a promising new class of treatment by regulators is spurring further investments into large confirmatory trials. Once approved for specific cancer indications, TIL therapy is positioned to rapidly penetrate global s and reach thousands more patients annually who do not respond to existing therapies.

Get more insights on this topic:  https://www.ukwebwire.com/global-til-therapy-a-promising-cancer-treatment-option/

Author Bio:

Money Singh is a seasoned content writer with over four years of experience in the  research sector. Her expertise spans various industries, including food and beverages, biotechnology, chemical and materials, defense and aerospace, consumer goods, etc. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/money-singh-590844163 )

*Note: 1. Source: Coherent  Insights, Public sources, Desk research 2. We have leveraged AI tools to mine information and compile it

[strangesmallbard]

listening to sansa i again and like. she and arya have the most normal sibling problems ever LMFAO. this series has fratricide and twincest and yet the most unhinged discourse exists about 11-year-old and 9-year-old sisters who are simply very different people and are (not so simply) contending with insane westerosi gender expectations. and cersei’s there! would YOU be normal to a sibling if cersei lannister were inflicted upon your developing personality? then killed your dog specifically to spite said sibling

[transsongtaewon]

I think the way baby Yoohyun cried is sooo cute, especially since it was all crocodile tears. Here is this tiny little guy deciding to get his way by crying because he saw it on tv and then his hyung, also a tiny little guy, starts crying too because he was so startled and itty bitty Yoohyun never anticipated that reaction so he just sort of stops crying so hyung will stop crying and this was never meant to end this way.

[serpentface]

Do psychotropic drugs and/or ritual play a role in any of the blightseed cultures? A pretty broad question, lol

Yeah that’s a very broad question, the answer is about as much as it tends to play roles in real history. Alcohol is pretty ubiquitous (outside of cultures that abstain from intoxicants) and used for a variety of purposes, opioids are commonly used in some parts for pain relief or recreational purposes, stimulants (usually in mild, natural forms) are used to provide extra energy, and hallucinogens are most commonly used as part of a larger religious framework (rather than for recreational purposes). Any more elaborate answer kinda has to be case by case in a certain culture or part of the setting.

I'll just take this as an opportunity to talk about the one established sect that pretty much REVOLVES around psychoactive use. This is the Scholarly Order of the Root, which is a sort of mystery religion + elite community of scholars who currently occupy the Ur-Tree and its forest in the far southern Lowlands (southeast of Imperial Wardin, on the same land mass).

The Ur-Tree is the obligatory Huge Fucking Fantasy Tree (and its surrounding forest). It’s a mass of vegetation about a mile tall and almost as old as Plant Life Itself, its upper branches are primeval plants, which become more modern the nearer they get to the ground (and each 'level' holds tiny ecosystems, some containing descendants of LONG-extinct arthropods/other small animals). Its lowest branches and the surrounding forest are contemporary plant life, and all is connected and protected by an incomparably MASSIVE fungal mycelium network (which is itself a living god).

A lot of the Scholars' more secretive practices revolve around experimentation with substance use with the goal of expanding the Mind and transcending the body to fully connect to the Dreamlands, and they have a supply chain of traders and mercenaries called Rootrunners who traffic substances into the Lowlands. Most of their psychoactive use is in a very intentional capacity and not just like, for fun, but a LOT of them are just straight up addicted to cocaine (in the form of alchemically refined bruljenum, which is used for practical purposes of its stimulant effect during long hours of work).

All known psychoactives are desirable for experimentation (particularly hallucinogens), with each having properties that either allow expansion of the Mind, transcendence of the body, or outright divine communion. Their effects are logged in great detail and interpreted to form the basis of the Scholars' understanding of the natural world and reality itself.

The most important substance is Ur-Root, which is root matter from subterranean levels of the Ur-Tree that have both their own intrinsic psychoactive substances and a very, very high concentration of living god mycelium. The tree root contains DMT and the mycelium has its own wholly unique effects (being an actual living god). They alchemically refine it into a purer, more potent form, and use it to expand beyond the body and directly commune with the Giants, a group of entities they have identified as the only true gods.

An Ur-Root trip starts off with minor visual distortion, which turns into shifting fractals that slowly obscure the vision. Eventually the senses are entirely taken over by a 'tunnel' of rapidly shifting fractals and geometries. In a complete trip, the experiencer gets a sense that they have been pushed through a membrane and entered another realm, finding themselves in a distinct experiential Space.

At this point they may encounter entities which communicate to them in a language impossible to describe but wholly understood. These beings are understood to be the Giants, or at least aspects of the Giants that mortals are capable of comprehending (they often take familiar tutelary forms of the Mantis or the Snake, or appear resembling the same type of sophont that the experiencer is, all composed of ever-shifting geometries). The experiencer often feels a sense of unconditional and endless love from these beings, though the Giants may be more hostile and may appear in the form of the Trickster (usually a cultural figure regarded as malicious, be it an animal or otherwise) in a bad trip.

(^Up until this point, this has mostly just been a DMT 'breakthrough' experience ft. 'machine elves' and the like).

They are then removed from this space and returned to something that feels like the real world, but is nearly unrecognizable. They have a sense of rapidly moving through time, and will usually see 'the spires' towards the beginning, which just so happen to look like this:

(source + some context via Implication- the spires are exactly what this art is depicting)

The experiencer continues to move across an unfathomable amount of time, occasionally 'seeing' other such flashes of unfamiliar landscapes and creatures, and yet also being devoid of all their senses, the 'seeing' is pure, unfiltered experience. There is a sense of interconnectedness with all life, and that one has become the forest (or even Life) itself. The sense of time is wildly distorted, the trip lasts only about 5 minutes but feels like an eternity and is understood as literal hundreds of millions of years.

The experiencer has usually lost any remaining sense of Self and individual consciousness during this phase (in which case this time distortion is usually a neutral or even peaceful experience), but some retain a fraction of their identity, and find themselves trapped and conscious while experiencing what feels like eternity (which can be LIFE-CHANGINGLY distressing, even after the fact).

(^This latter part of the trip is the effects of the Ur-Tree fungus).

The trip ends with a sense of rushing through the ground and back up into one's body, at which point they will abruptly return to their senses and consciousness. The details are then immediately retrieved via interview and recorded in immense detail. The whole experience is understood as having been full comprehension of the Dreamlands, communion with the Giants, and then a tour through the act of creation.

This is done as part of the initiatory practice into the inner mystery-religion of the scholars, and as needed for study by high scholar-priests. It is not taken lightly, both as it is absolute communion with the gods and reality, and in that it can be a very, very difficult experience. People who have gone through this often walk away with a permanently shifted perspective, often in a positive and/or comforting way- a sense of interconnectedness with all life, a peace with the concept of death, seeing less of a point in individual ego and the concept of Self, and comfort in the sense of divine love they (may have) experienced. This heavily influences the philosophy of the Scholars and has had effects by proxy in the religious worldviews of the region.

Details of this experience are closely guarded, and initiates are given absolutely no prior knowledge and expectations for their trip. This is seen as a necessity- their naivety will allow for a true, unfiltered experience, and can be used to gauge whether they should or should not be accepted. Those that have a distinctly bad trip upon initiation may be assumed to have been 'rejected' by the giants and thus denied full priesthood, though this largely depends on How they interpret their distressing trip- those who identify this as a test and harsh lesson in a journey to enlightenment may be accepted (as this is how fully initiated scholar-priests interpret and handle their bad trips).

This inner priesthood is only a small fraction of the Scholarly Order, and its greater function is as a hub of education and repository of knowledge, and Scholar-trained doctors can provide some of the best medical care available in the setting ('best medical care in this setting' only means so much but it's pretty solid, relatively speaking). Only a chosen few Scholars ever get to commune with the Ur-Root, and most of the divine secrets revealed in the process are kept hidden (though they indirectly influence the politics and worldview of the entire order).

[inkykeiji]

ok oK OKAY but LETS consider sunday-nii right? like it had always been the three of you; sunday, robin and you. and then robin flew off to be the star and sunday just never really adjusted from the gap. he had all this love to give and since robin was no longer there to receive it, he just doubled it over on you. like he just gets this obsessive attachment, always needing to know where you are and what youre doing? thats too far. too dangerous. its better to just stay at home, i have everything for you here. the man has pretty much clipped your wings and left you stranded in his grip. and from there its just so easy for the lines to blur. youre not just his sister, youre his everything. so why not add wifey to the title list. after all, you dont need anyone else but him. so who else would be fitting as the title of your husband 🦦

ANON omggg i am in love with this because it feels so on brand with sunday’s character. we know he is obsessive + compulsive, we know he likes order and rules and complete control (and seems to get anxious/angry/agitated when he doesn’t have it or it is threatened), and we know that he truly believes himself to be benevolent + that his actions are in the chief interest and welfare of those he cares about.

he’s really protective, and he’s really overbearing with his protection and his love, and he genuinely believes he’s doing what’s right for you, what’s best for you, because (in his mind) he is more intelligent than you are and he knows so much better than his precious baby sister ever could. it’s so easy for sunday to delude himself into thinking that what he’s doing is not only right, but it is just as well, it is his duty as your older brother, his god-given role to fulfill and then exceed, and he plans to do so flawlessly.

and the worst part about it is that he’s so fucking sweet about it, too!!! he’s so doting, so darling, loves you so fucking much that you feel bitter guilt churn heavy and sick in your stomach at just the mere thought of disobeying him or questioning him + his motives. he’s so authentic in his self-deception that when your own sound logic and gut feelings break through the conditioning, you feel awful for doubting him and his intentions in the slightest, and gaslight yourself into believing that your paranoid or spoiled and ungrateful for such a adoring, devoted big brother.

i also think it’s entirely possible that he believes himself to have made a mistake with allowing robin to go off on her own, and vowing secretly to himself to never make that mistake with you. he’s learned his lesson from allowing his other younger sibling too much freedom; that it’s safer and better for all parties involved if you’re locked away in a gorgeous golden cage, where he can tend to all of your needs with precision and perfection. you’ll be happier and more peaceful and truly free locked away inside your big brother’s pretty cage, he promises.

[beneathsilverstars]

one of my irl besties i follow on twitter and i do NOT get her posting style. irl our senses of humor play so well together that we have been complimented by strangers at the store on how funny our idle conversations are, but i look at her posts and feel nothing but confusion. i can't figure out what it means OR what's funny about it. i don't know if i'm misreading the tone, or if her online circles just have a totally different posting style than mine, or what, but her posts are incomprehensible to me!

anyway i think this is what following loop on socmed would be like.

[straightlightyagami]

saw someone say it's weird for white people to not put their race in their bio ?????

[geostatonary]

In other news I've digitized the little pink book, aka Nobilis 1e, because I could

[ahamkara-apologist]

Do you believe Lightbearers are changed biologically from before they became Lightbearers?

Can't believe I forgot to answer this- I genuinely thought I did until I was scrolling through my inbox and saw it pop up again. Oops.

Anyways, my headcanon is that yes, Lightbearers are biologically different than non-Lightbearers- they become so when their ghost is rezzing them for the first time. During the first rez, their bodies are essentially restructured to better suit being a vessel of Light, with far greater phsyical resiliance, capacity, and overall durability being granted as a boon from the Traveler so that they're not torn to shreds when using even the most basal abilities. Even Lightless, they're still much stronger than a baseline human, they cannot age (their telomeres simply do not degrade and their DNA repair kit becomes more accurate, so they don't incur the gradual DNA loss/nonspecific remedies that lead to the maladies of old age), and they're still paracausally sensitive, even if their conduit for channeling the Light has been cut. Outside of the never-aging and paracasal-sensitivity thing, the effect isn't drastic, but they are still noticibly hardier than a person who'd never directly touched the light of the Traveler would be. Eris, Zavala, and Osiris could be beaten by a sufficiently strong mortal in an arm wrestling contest, for example, but they're all able to learn to use Darkness/walk off injuries with an ease that a Lightless mortal cannot.

After the first rez, additional permanant change is possible, but it requires either paracausal alteration (such as wounds created by Darkness, wounds that were earned and began healing in a no-light zone, or subconcious paracausal alteration, where the Guardian's own body rejects the touch of the Light), or deliberate ghost manipulation. I like to headcanon that by using the Light in much the same way that they would heal, Ghosts can learn to tweak parts of their guardian's bodies to be altered to their liking, which is a method by which transitioning post-rez occurs, in the instance that one was not an exo or did not medically transition before death. It's extremely delicate, but all they have to do is use their bond and the Light to go 'hey, you're missing something, you need to make more of this hormone or grow more of this tissue to fully heal', and bam, gender transed :) This fully depends on the skill of the ghost, however, so its a slow process even if it can theoretically lead to a full transition over time, and certain tissues can only atrophy so far before they need to be cut off. In the case of exos, all the ghosts need to do is block the mental disconnect between the body alterations and the perception of what those should be, and that's about it

[revelisms]

Braindumping about Silco and Vi, because these two are such fantastic narrative foils for each other—and, in the same breath, completely cut from the same cloth.

I keep wishing they had more scenes together, another square-off, something to put them head-to-head—because there's so much potential for them to counteract the layers of each other.

At the root of it all, Vander's looming between them, this monolith of a presence that ties their pasts together. But above that, still, we have Jinx—who not only is their driving tension, but their greatest possibility for reconnection.

Here, we have Vander's daughter—someone who, for all intents and purposes, has become what he wanted, but who has also been someone he saw too much of himself in; who he did his best to reshape, instead of enable, and who put him on a pedestal, and truly saw him as hers, more than perhaps anyone (except, well, Silco).

Vi treasured Vander, fully looked up to him as her father—and losing him shattered her. In between all the layers of it, there's this underlying thread in his actions towards her, a tension that just sits with her through Act 1—Do as I say, not as I do (or, rather, as I did).

Here, we also have Vander's partner—someone who knew him before, knew what he was, what he resented, and what he became, instead; and who bears the scars of what all their fallout grew to be. Someone who holds the memory of him tangibly, in multiple respects, as though it is something he physically cannot sever: Vander's knife, the Drop—and even, in some ways, Jinx.

Silco is still clinging to the idea of Vander, throughout the entire series. To the potential in their reunion at the cannery; to the reassurance of what he knew him to be (I knew you still had it in you; Vander wasn't the man you thought he was); to this need he has to still speak to him, even after everything.

But Vi was raised with the burden of being the eldest; being the one most capable of providing protection—and, as a consequence, with the burden of responsibility.

She's not only a sister to Jinx. She's a guardian to her—and in many respects, a stand-in mother. And Silco, as a surrogate father, is standing right in the middle of that. A roadblock between "Powder," as Vi knows her sister as, and "Jinx," as Silco knows his daughter to be.

Right at the forefront, we have so much conflict here. Vi is so similar to Vander, to the point that she is nearly his spirit incarnate—so much so that having her resurface from a presumed grave just sets fuel to fire for a vendetta Silco has never been able to snuff out.

But beneath that—far beneath that—they have so much in common. Vi's headstrong rebuttals in Act 1 about going against Piltover and striking them down, about being made to feel lesser her whole life and needing to fight against it, just sings with Silco's anger in the cannery (You'd die for the cause, but you won't fight for one?).

These are two kindred spirits, two revolutionaries willing to do anything for their city and those they love, and who aren't afraid to fight for it. Who want to fight for it.

But trapped between it all, we have Jinx. Someone Vi is not willing to sacrifice (i.e., her memory of Powder), and who Silco, by the end of the series, isn't willing to sacrifice, either (i.e., his loyalty to Jinx).

Vi, of course, could never fathom Silco being a father to Powder (how could she, after he is the reason Vander was taken from her?)—and looks for justifications for her hatred, in everything he does.

But the unfortunate truth of the matter is that for all Vander cherished and nurtured Vi as a vision of himself—so has Silco, to Jinx. He sees himself in her. He has empowered her, cherished her. He is so incredibly tender with her, in his own ways. And—for all his absolute faults, his skewed morals, his tunnel-visioned zealousy to achieve Zaun—he is a good father to Jinx, just as Vander was a good father to Vi.

The question I keep finding myself mulling over, though, is whether these two could find elements of that, once again, in each other.

There are so many things Silco isn't—not only in Vander's shadow, but simply in the character that he is. He doesn't come in swinging; he plots, he strategizes, he fights with words. He isn't a warm presence, or a jovial one; he's chilling, he's dry, he's distanced. There are countless contradictions one can draw between the two of them—and so many layers one can tease apart, on how their opposites attracted each other, how they worked (a balance that will no longer ever be).

But there are so many things Silco is. He's critical, he's fiercely rational, he knows how to weave a crowd around his finger with a single intonation. He admires the outcasts, the scrappers, those that have dredged through society to claw for what they can. He surrounds himself with them—and he operates alongside them, as an equal as much as an usurper.

He's a flavor of parenthood Vi didn't receive, but could have—the one that would have validated her need to fight; who would have taught her that strength comes in numbers, not in one's single ability to protect; who would have seen her snarkiness, her quick wit on her feet, and taught her to use it to her leverage.

The tragedy of the whole series is that Jinx needs them both to have balance in her life—to keep the tether of her child self and her trauma from splitting her apart at the seams—yet for Silco and Vi, as the narrative destines them for (and as it destined Silco and Vander for), any semblance of a connection between them is doomed for destruction.

There's too much they hold fiercely to themselves, in their own traumas, that they cannot set down—even for the sake of Jinx's needs. They are equally selfish, in that way. They want the version of Vander that they are not willing to let go of; and they want the version of Jinx that they know her to be.

But they could change. They could.

Silco did, by the end. Chose his daughter, his legacy, over the cause, over his vision of progress. And Vi did, too. Chose "peace," chose to set down the gauntlets, chose politics (and—arguably—complacency, in the same way Vander did) as the path forward.

But what if they set it all down, for Jinx? What if they became what she needed, on both sides? A father who sees her, nurtures her, like Vander saw and nurtured Vi—and a sister who loves and protects her, like Vi loved and protected Powder; who could learn, maybe, to love and protect "Jinx," too?

And maybe—just maybe—Silco and Vi could learn to appreciate each other, for all their surface hatreds. Find mentorship, find balance again, in each other. And through it, Vi could learn that protection, responsibility, isn't the only quality to strive for. That even she can be nurtured again, too.

[colinwilson11]

[crimeronan]

hello other people with chronic pain/illness. what do you do when your hobbies all make you agitated and upset and in more pain but you also can't sleep. this is a legitimate query i will accept any answers. thank u.

[pigeon-feet]

btw i did get orchids. and a free butterwort. and a bougainvillea cutting. also some mini african violet leaf cuttings (not shown).

all from wade’s orchids.

[elleryhart]

i have three whole new fallen london ocs that I haven't begun to tell y'all about bc i can't think of how.

[transmechanicus]

Woke up from my little power outage nap and couldn’t even manage to eat a full box of macked cheese, grad school will fuck you up for life kids, do it at your own risk.

[mermaidsirennikita]

lol dude I'm at a point where I get sent a really solid amount of widgets from publishers on NetGalley and I'm very happy about it, but it has also gotten to a point where I can almost PREDICT getting sent a widget about a sapphic book

like if I have read a wlw book by a pub and reviewed it well they're like "WE HEARD YOU LIKE LESBIANS HERE'S ANOTHER"

and I mean, they're not wrong, so I'm not complaining, but I am always FASCINATED by the potential data filtering processes on the publishers' end