Fennec Pharmaceuticals, which licensed an OHSU discovery leading to development of the drug Pedmark, has been granted Orphan Drug Exclusivity by the Food and Drug Administration.

Amy Moran, Ph.D., is on a research team receiving a PCF Team Challenge Award to study activating the NLRP3 inflammasome as a potential way to treat advanced prostate cancer.

KGW-TV profiles the OHSU Knight Cancer Institute’s Community Partnership Program, which helps collaborative Oregon groups address community-identified cancer needs. Angela Brown, a leader with the St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church in Portland, which received program funding, says the program helped the church create a community cancer awareness and healthy living symposium to connect uninsured and underinsured Black women and men to cancer health education and support resources in the Portland area. Brown says: “We are able to do a lot of things in our community, especially with the African American community to change the way we cook, to change the way we think; our attitudes about healthy living, about exercising and just eating right.”

The Deep Dive’s coverage of British Columbia becoming the first Canadian province to decriminalize drugs cites a 2021 PBS NewsHour story that included Andrew Seaman, M.D., saying recovery can be challenging when someone is arrested for substance use because that can adversely impact their ability to be employed and housed.

Letisha Wyatt, Ph.D., is among several scientists discussing a new NIH requirement that grant applications include a data-sharing and management plan. She says: “Smaller labs that don’t get giant projects funded or minority scientists who don’t have access to the same level of funding will be in a place where they may not have adequate resources to meet the requirements of this new data-sharing policy in the same way that well-resourced labs might."

An OPB segment highlights the recent FDA approval of sodium thiosulfate, a drug studied for years by OHSU researchers that prevents treatment-induced hearing loss in pediatric cancer patients who receive the common chemotherapy drug Cisplatin. The segment includes insight from Kristin Knight, M.S., and Jennifer Boesche, whose child received cancer therapy at the hospital.

Research by Fikadu Tafesse, Ph.D., and Marcel Curlin, M.D., finds immunity against COVID-19 gathers strength with more time between vaccination and infection and suggests vaccine boosters should be spaced no more frequently than a year apart.

A Register-Guard story about how funds generated through the state’s drug-decriminalizing law, Measure 110, are going toward peer support mentoring for people experiencing substance use disorder notes OHSU research found Oregon has about half the resources it needs to address the disorder.

In a Consumer Reports story about various consumer products purporting to reduce back pain by improving posture, Scott Beadnell, DPT, says, “Generally, we think of those as gimmicks.”

Using a technique called intracranial EEG, OHSU and University of Oregon research finds simple movement like pushing a button sends ripples of activity through neuron networks located throughout the brain.