The United States COVID-19 Forecast Hub dataset

Academic researchers, government agencies, industry groups, and individuals have produced forecasts at an unprecedented scale during the COVID-19 pandemic. To leverage these forecasts, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) partnered with an academic research lab at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to create the US COVID-19 Forecast Hub. Launched in April 2020, the Forecast Hub is a dataset with point and probabilistic forecasts of incident cases, incident hospitalizations, incident deaths, and cumulative deaths due to COVID-19 at county, state, and national, levels in the United States. Included forecasts represent a variety of modeling approaches, data sources, and assumptions regarding the spread of COVID-19. The goal of this dataset is to establish a standardized and comparable set of short-term forecasts from modeling teams. These data can be used to develop ensemble models, communicate forecasts to the public, create visualizations, compare models, and inform policies regarding COVID-19 mitigation. These open-source data are available via download from GitHub, through an online API, and through R packages

RSPO3 antagonism inhibits growth and tumorigenicity in colorectal tumors harboring common Wnt pathway mutations

Abstract Activating mutations in the Wnt pathway are a characteristic feature of colorectal cancer (CRC). The R-spondin (RSPO) family is a group of secreted proteins that enhance Wnt signaling and RSPO2 and RSPO3 gene fusions have been reported in CRC. We have previously shown that Wnt pathway blockers exhibit potent combinatorial activity with taxanes to inhibit tumor growth. Here we show that RSPO3 antagonism synergizes with paclitaxel based chemotherapies in patient-derived xenograft models (PDX) with RSPO3 fusions and in tumors with common CRC mutations such as APC, β-catenin, or RNF43. In these latter types of tumors that represent over 90% of CRC, RSPO3 is produced by stromal cells in the tumor microenvironment and the activating mutations appear to sensitize the tumors to Wnt-Rspo synergy. The combination of RSPO3 inhibition and taxane treatment provides an approach to effectively target oncogenic WNT signaling in a significant number of patients with colorectal and other intestinal cancers