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The situation of the COVID-19 pandemic reminds us that we permanently need high-value flexible solutions to urgent clinical needs including simplified diagnostic technologies suitable for use in the field and for delivering targeted therapeutics. From our perspective nanotechnology is revealed as a vital resource for this, as a generic platform of technical solutions to tackle complex medical challenges. It is towards this perspective and focusing on nanomedicine that we take issue with Prof Park's recent editorial published in the Journal of Controlled Release. Prof. Park argued that in the last 15 years nanomedicine failed to deliver the promised innovative clinical solutions to the patients (Park, K. The beginning of the end of the nanomedicine hype. Journal of Controlled Release, 2019; 305, 221–222 [1]. We, the ETPN (European Technology Platform on Nanomedicine) [ 2 ], respectfully disagree. In fact, the more than 50 formulations currently in the market, and the recent approval of 3 key nanomedicine products (e. g. Onpattro, Hensify and Vyxeos), have demonstrated that the nanomedicine field is concretely able to design products that overcome critical barriers in conventional medicine in a unique manner, but also to deliver within the cells new drug-free therapeutic effects by using pure physical modes of action, and therefore make a difference in patients lives. Furthermore, the >400 nanomedicine formulations currently in clinical trials are expecting to bring novel clinical solutions (e.g. platforms for nucleic acid delivery), alone or in combination with other key enabling technologies to the market, including biotechnologies, microfluidics, advanced materials, biomaterials, smart systems, photonics, robotics, textiles, Big Data and ICT (information & communication technologies) more generally. However, we agree with Prof. Park that “ it is time to examine the sources of difficulty in clinical translation of nanomedicine and move forward “. But for reaching this goal, the investments to support clinical translation of promising nanomedicine formulations should increase, not decrease. As recently encouraged by EMA in its roadmap to 2025, we should create more unity through a common knowledge hub linking academia, industry, healthcare providers and hopefully policy makers to reduce the current fragmentation of the standardization and regulatory body landscape. We should also promote a strategy of cross-technology innovation, support nanomedicine development as a high value and low-cost solution to answer unmet medical needs and help the most promising innovative projects of the field to get better and faster to the clinic. This global vision is the one that the ETPN chose to encourage for the last fifteen years. All actions should be taken with a clear clinical view in mind, “ without any fanfare ”, to focus “ on what matters in real life ”, which is the patient and his/her quality of life....

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There is a need to derive donor-specific tolerance in clinical organ transplantation, where potential benefits remain overshadowed by chronic rejection and side effects of continual immunosuppressive therapy. It is known that the mature immune system in mice can be reprogrammed to accept a foreign graft as if it were "self." Here we show that, once generated, this state of operational tolerance becomes self-sustaining, imposing itself on new cohorts of lymphocytes as they arise. These new cohorts retain specificity for the tolerizing antigen and can be selectively amplified to tolerate new antigens that have linked expression with the original tolerogen. Regulation is critically dependent upon the continuous presence of tolerizing antigen and is mediated by the CD4+ lymphocyte population. We propose that such natural mechanisms of immune regulation may eventually be exploited for transplantation tolerance, even in fully immune-competent recipients.

Generation of neurons from patient fibroblasts using a combination of developmentally defined transcription factors has great potential in disease modelling, as well as ultimately for use in regeneration and repair. However, generation of physiologically mature neurons in vitro remains problematic. Here we demonstrate the cell-cycle-dependent phosphorylation of a key reprogramming transcription factor, Ascl1, on multiple serine-proline sites. This multisite phosphorylation is a crucial regulator of the ability of Ascl1 to drive neuronal differentiation and maturation in vivo in the developing embryo; a phosphomutant form of Ascl1 shows substantially enhanced neuronal induction activity in Xenopus embryos. Mechanistically, we see that this un(der) phosphorylated Ascl1 is resistant to inhibition by both cyclindependent kinase activity and Notch signalling, both of which normally limit its neurogenic potential. Ascl1 is a central component of reprogramming transcription factor cocktails to generate neurons from human fibroblasts; the use of phosphomutant Ascl1 in place of the wildtype protein significantly promotes neuronal maturity after human fibroblast reprogramming in vitro. These results demonstrate that cellcycle-dependent post-translational modification of proneural proteins directly regulates neuronal differentiation in vivo during development, and that this regulatory mechanism can be harnessed to promote maturation of neurons obtained by transdifferentiation of human cells in vitro.

A panel of 127 monoclonal antibodies against canine leukocyte antigens, including controls, was distributed to 29 laboratories that performed a variety of experiments to identify groups of antibodies against the canine equivalents of some of the human CD antigens. Cluster analysis was performed centrally, using the submitted antibody binding data from immunofluorescence, ELISA and immuno-histology experiments. Immunoprecipitation for molecular weight determination was also performed centrally with T-cell blasts and a B-cell line as the sources of antigen. Clusters of three or more antibodies were found that defined the canine equivalents of the CD5, CD4, CD8 and Thy-1 antigens, and these could be used to label T-cell subsets from the peripheral blood. Other groups of monoclonal antibodies recognized the canine homologues of the CD11/18 group of antigens, CD44 and the CD45/CD45R antigen family: these should be useful in isolating functional subsets of CD4+ helper T cells. There was a cluster of four antibodies that bound strongly to platelets (probably CD41 antigen), three antibodies that were specific to B cells (including CD21) and two antibodies against a granulocyte antigen (possibly CD15). A number of reagents were found against canine MHC-II and immunoglobulin, with some of the latter able to distinguish between Ig subclasses. Properties of each of the canine antigens defined by these monoclonal antibodies are discussed and compared with other species. The availability of such a panel of reagents should allow rapid improvements in the immunological diagnosis of canine disease, and there might now be a potential for testing novel therapeutic strategies in a clinical veterinary setting.

Within the immune system there is an exquisite ability to discriminate between "self " and "non-self " that is orchestrated by T lymphocytes. Discriminatory pathways guide differentiation of these lymphocytes into either regulatory (

Within the immune system there is an exquisite ability to discriminate between "self " and "nonself" that is orchestrated by antigen-specific T lymphocytes. Genomic plasticity enables differentiation of naïve CD4+ T lymphocytes into either regulatory cells (Treg) that express the transcription factor Foxp3 and actively prevent auto-immune self destruction, or effector cells (Teff) that attack and destroy their cognate target. An example of such plasticity is our recent discovery that leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF) supports Treg maturation in contrast to IL-6 which drives development of the pathogenic Th17 effector phenotype. This has revealed a LIF/IL6 axis in T cell development which can be exploited for modulation using targeted cytokine delivery. Here we demonstrate that LIF-loaded nanoparticles (NPs) directed to CD4+ T cells (i) oppose IL6-driven Th17 development; (ii) prolong survival of vascularized heart grafts in mice; and (iii) expand FOXP3+ CD4+ T cell numbers in a non-human primate model in vitro. In contrast, IL-6 loaded nanoparticles directed to CD4+ T cells increase Th17 development. Notably, nanoparticlemediated delivery was demonstrated to be critical: unloaded nanoparticles and soluble LIF or IL-6 controls failed to recapitulate the efficacy of cytokine-loaded nanoparticles in induction and/or expansion of Foxp3+ cells or Th17 cells. Thus, this targeted nanoparticle approach is able to harness endogenous immune-regulatory pathways, providing a powerful new method to modulating T cell developmental plasticity in immune-mediated disease indications.