The FEBS Journal has published an obituary dedicated to our colleague, the head of the Laboratory of Receptor Cell Biology, the remarkable scientist Alexander Georgievich Petrenko, who died from COVID-19 in May 2021. The publication covers the scientific career of Alexander Petrenko, which lasted more than 4 decades. For more details on the publication, please follow the link: https://febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/febs.16282

An outstanding scientist, director and president of the Scripps Research Institute (from 1987 to 2012), founding director of the Shanghai Institute for Advanced Immunochemical Studies, a member of the International Advisory Board of the IBCh RAS and a laureate of many international awards, Professor Richard Lerner passed away on December 2, 2021 at the age of 83. He made a huge contribution to the development of biological and medical sciences. The staff and administration of the IBCh RAS express their sincere condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of Richard Lerner.

The team of the Department of metabolism and redox biology of Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry in collaboration with colleagues from the Federal Center of Brain Research and Neurotechnologies of the Federal Medical Biological Agency, Lomonosov Moscow State University and several other institutes have developed a technology that allows real time recording of intracellular metabolic processes in vivo. On the model of ischemic stroke in rodents, the new data were obtained on changes occurring in neurons during the development of pathology.

To reduce side effects in the process of oncotherapy, it seems promising to use two-step targeting delivery of active agents, or pre-targeting: at the first stage, a non-toxic targeting module (also including antibody or non-immunoglobulin scaffolds) is selectively delivered to a cell of a certain molecular profile, and at the second stage, a cytotoxic agent capable of specifically interacting with the first module is administrated into the organism.

Development of CAR-T therapy led to immediate success in the treatment of B cell leukemia. Manufacturing of therapy-competent functional CAR-T cells needs robust protocols for ex vivo/in vitro expansion of modified T-cells. In this work, a team of scientists from the IBCh RAS in collaboration with a group of scientists from Dmitry Rogachev National Medical Research Center and colleagues from the Faculty of Biology of Moscow State University have created a new technology for the expansion of CAR T cells using artificial vesicles carrying surface tumor antigens. This approach will allow in the future to obtain CAR T-cells with improved functional properties and to minimize the level of premature "exhaustion" of the CAR T-cell population.

The human ErbB3 receptor is an important pharmacological target in the treatment of various types of cancer. A variety of anti-ErbB3 monoclonal antibodies are currently in development and are classic immunoglobulins. However, the search for new sources of antibodies or nanoantibodies consisting only of the heavy chain is being conducted more and more actively. Thus, in this work, a team of scientists from the Laboratory of Biocatalysis of the IBCh RAS, together with colleagues from the Laboratory of Renewable Energy Sources of the Academic University discovered a group of new single-domain llama antibodies targeting the extracellular domain of ErbB3 using the phage display method. It was found that the single-domain antibodies are not only highly affine for various receptor epitopes, but also have an inhibitory effect on the growth of tumor cells expressing ErbB3.

CAR-T cell therapy is the most advanced way to treat therapy resistant hematologic cancers, in particular B cell lymphomas and leukemias. T cells equipped ex vivo with chimeric receptor recognize target tumor cells and kill them. CAR-T cells that recognize CD19 marker of B cells (CD19 CAR-T) are considered the gold standard of CAR-T therapy and are approved by FDA. But in some cases, CD19 CAR-T cell therapy fails due to immune suppressive microenvironment.

Breast cancer is one of the most common cancer among women. According to the WHO, in 2020, over 2.2 million cases of this disease were registered worldwide. High level of HER2, a tyrosine kinase receptor, is associated with a more aggressive clinical behavior and poor prognosis for breast cancer patients.

Oligopeptidase B (OpB) is a two-domain serine peptidase with trypsin-like substrate specificity. OpB belongs to the prolyl oligopeptidase (POP) family and are found only in bacteria and protozoa. It is known that OpB are pathogenesis factors of protozoan infections and protect bacterial cells from a number of antimicrobial peptides. Nevertheless, they are the least studied representatives of POP, especially bacterial OpB, for which there was a complete lack of structural information. The researches from IBC RAS together with those of NRC Kurchatov Institute and the IBOC of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus managed to obtain crystal structures of bacterial OpB from Serratia proteomaculans (PSP) with a modified hinge region.

Melanoma is aggressive cancer characterized by acidification of extracellular environment. Scientists from the Laboratory of bioengineering of neuromodulators and neuroreceptors IBCh RAS together with colleages from NN Blokhin NMRCO showed for the first time that extracellular media acidification increases proliferation, migration, and invasion of patient-derived metastatic melanoma cells and up-regulates cell-surface expression of acid sensitive channels containing the ASIC1a, α-ENaC, and γ-ENaC subunits. No influence of media acidification on these processes was found in normal keratinocytes.