Johns Hopkins and University of Alberta researchers have identified a single protein as the root of painful and dangerous allergic reactions to a range of medications and other substances. If a new drug can be found that targets the problematic protein, they say, it could help smooth treatment for patients with conditions ranging from prostate cancer to diabetes to HIV.
Extra vitamin E protected older mice from a bacterial infection that commonly causes pneumonia. The study from researchers at Tufts University found that extra vitamin E helped regulate the mice’s immune system.
Baylor Research Institute investigators found that the lipoprotein LOX-1 promotes humoral responses, which could allow researchers to design effective vaccines against microbial infections.
Macrophages are best known for their Pac Man–like ability to gobble up cellular debris and pathogens in order to thwart infection. A new study describes how these immune cells also help resolve inflammation by inducing white blood cells called neutrophils to leave wounded tissue.
A key protein may represent a new way to use the immune system to speed healing and counter inflammatory, infectious and autoimmune diseases, according to study led by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and published in the December issue of Cell Reports.
The presence of an immune-suppressing protein in non-cancerous immune cells may predict how patients with different types of cancer respond to treatment, a multi-center phase I study using an investigational immune therapy drug has found. The study, led by a Yale Cancer Center investigator, is described in the Nov. 27 edition of the journal Nature.
In the near future, physicians may treat some cancer patients with personalized vaccines that spur their immune systems to attack malignant tumors. New research led by scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has brought the approach one step closer to reality.
Fast facts: • In order to distinguish self from other, the immune system processes proteins from inside and outside the body in different ways. • A new study revises understanding of how the process works and sheds light on autoimmune disease.
A protein complex known as STING plays a crucial role in detecting the presence of tumor cells and promoting an anti-tumor response by the body’s innate immune system, according to two separate studies in Immunity. The results have major implications for the growing field of cancer immunotherapy.
A team of researchers led by Ludwig Chicago’s Yang-Xin Fu and Ralph Weichselbaum has uncovered the primary signaling mechanisms and cellular interactions that drive immune responses against tumors treated with radiotherapy. Published in the current issue of Immunity, their study suggests novel strategies for boosting the effectiveness of radiotherapy, and for combining it with therapies that harness the immune system to treat cancer.
A team led by Ludwig and Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) researchers has published a landmark study on the genetic basis of response to a powerful cancer therapy known as immune checkpoint blockade. Their paper, in the current issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, describes the precise genetic signatures in melanoma tumors that determine whether a patient will respond to one such therapy.
Microbiologists at NYU Langone Medical Center say they have what may be the first strong evidence that the natural presence of viruses in the gut — or what they call the ‘virome’ — plays a health-maintenance and infection-fighting role similar to that of the intestinal bacteria that dwell there and make up the “microbiome.”
UCLA stem cell researchers cured 18 children born without a working immune system due to life-threatening ADA-deficient Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID). Breakthrough stem cell gene therapy developed by Dr. Donald Kohn and team identifies and corrects faulty gene in children with ADA-deficient SCID using child’s own cells.
When a viral infection spread through five genetically identical mice in a row, the virus replicated faster and became more virulent or severe. But when the infection spread one-by-one through five genetically diverse mice, the virus had trouble adapting and became less virulent. The University of Utah study suggests that increased genetic diversity should be promoted in livestock and in captive-bred endangered species so as to limit their risk of getting deadly infections.
Newly formed B cells take the easy way out when it comes to exiting the bone marrow, according to researchers at Yale University School of Medicine.
Activation of the innate immune system with the bacterial protein flagellin could prevent and cure rotavirus infection, which is among the most common causes of severe diarrhea, says a Georgia State University research team that described the method as a novel means to prevent and treat viral infection.
Scientists have demonstrated for the first time that a single-dose, needleless Ebola vaccine given to primates through their noses and lungs protected them against infection for at least 21 weeks.
A new method of developing vaccines could point the way forward in the fight against infectious diseases for which traditional vaccination has failed, according to a new Rutgers study. The method involves training white blood cells that have not previously been the primary focus of vaccine development. William Gause, senior associate dean for research at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, led the study, which recently was published in the journal Nature Immunology.
University of Colorado Cancer Center study shows that IL-37 regulates immune sensitivity across disease types
Flu infection has long-ranging effects beyond the lung that can wreak havoc in the gut and cause gastrointestinal symptoms, according to researchers in China. The study suggests ways to relieve these symptoms without interfering with the body’s ability to fight the flu virus in the lung.
Immunotherapy that can be effective against tumors in young, thin mice can be lethal to obese ones, a new study by UC Davis researchers has found. The findings, published online today in The Journal of Experimental Medicine, suggest a possible link between body fat and the risk of toxicity from some types of immunotherapy.
UCLA scientists show that two genes not previously known to be involved with the immune system play an active role in directing stem cells to fight infection
A new influenza virus, discovered in pigs and later found in cows, shares common ancestry with known influenza viruses, but is distinct enough that researchers have proposed calling it Type D Influenza. Three years ago Ben Hause, then a doctoral student at South Dakota State University, identified and characterized the new virus. SDSU virologist Feng Li and immunologist Radhey Kaushik will develop genetic and biochemical tools to study the virus and then determine how it is transmitted and how it replicates at the molecular level through a grant from the National Institutes of Health.
By tricking the immune system into generating antibodies specific for only one bacterial protein, Staphylococcus aureus dodges the production of antibodies that might otherwise protect against infection. Vaccine approaches must be designed to side-step this bacterial subterfuge.
University of Utah scientists have identified two microRNA molecules that control chronic inflammation, a discovery that one day may help researchers prevent certain fatal or debilitating conditions before they start.
Researchers have made a fast-acting “vaccine” that can reverse the course of myasthenia gravis, a non-inherited autoimmune form of muscle weakness, in an animal model of the disease.
Researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have discovered that T-cells – a type of white blood cell that learns to recognize and attack microbial pathogens – are activated by a pain receptor.
Diet-induced changes in the gut’s bacterial ecosystem can alter susceptibility to an autoinflammatory bone disease by modifying the immune response, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientists reported. The findings appeared September 28 as an advanced online publication of the scientific journal Nature.
To protect their gut microbes during illness, sick mice produce specialized sugars in the gut that feed their microbiota and maintain a healthy microbial balance. This protective mechanism also appears to help resist or tolerate additional harmful pathogens, and its disruption may play a role in human diseases such as Crohn’s disease.
A genetic disease called SCID forces patients to breathe filtered air and avoid human contact because their bodies cannot fight germs. Now, using a mouse model, Virginia Tech researchers describe a potential biomarker to detect SCID.
Every day, organ transplant patients around the world take a drug called rapamycin to keep their immune systems from rejecting their new kidneys and hearts. New research suggests that the same drug could help brain tumor patients by boosting the effect of new immune-based therapies.
Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have described how a single family of antibodies that broadly neutralizes different strains of HIV has evolved remarkably diverse structures to attack a vulnerable site on the virus. The findings provide clues for the design of a future HIV vaccine.
Thanks to new insights related to dendritic cell vaccines, researchers are investigating a potential vaccine for MS treatment and prevention at the Baylor Institute for Immunology Research (BIIR), a division of Baylor Research Institute. If future research supports early findings, the study could mark an important first in that it attacks MS early while preserving the immune system.
Scientists have found a way to find the proverbial needle in the cancer antigen haystack. The results have the potential to completely change current approaches to generating anticancer vaccines.
Dangerous new pathogens such as the Ebola virus invoke scary scenarios of deadly epidemics, but even ancient scourges such as the bubonic plague are still providing researchers with new insights on how the body responds to infections.
During cancer development, tumor cells decorate their surfaces with sugar compounds called glycans that are different from those found on normal, healthy cells. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine report that sialic acids at the tips of these cancer cell glycans are capable of engaging with immune system cells and changing the latter’s response to the tumor – for good and bad.
Leaky intestines may cripple bacteria-fighting immune cells in patients with common variable immunodeficiency (CVID), a rare hereditary disease. The study may explain why these patients suffer from recurrent bacterial infections.
A single protein may tip the balance between ridding the body of a dangerous hepatitis virus and enduring life-long chronic infection, according to researchers in Germany.
The fast and safe technique developed at the Salk Institute circumvents problems that have hindered regenerative medicine.
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine have shown for the first time how the activation of a receptor provokes the inflammation and bone degradation of rheumatoid arthritis -- and that activation of this one receptor, found on cells in the fluid of arthritic joints, is all that is required.
In a new study that compared people with and without asthma, researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found no difference in the key immune response to viruses in the lungs and breathing passages. The work suggests that a fundamental antiviral defense mechanism is intact in asthma. This means that another aspect of the immune system must explain the difficulty people with asthma have when they encounter respiratory viruses.
Researchers open a new page in the immune system's playbook, discovering more chatter goes on among the body's infection fighters than was suspected.
Expert is available to comment on the impending likely approval of Merck & Co.’s immuno-oncology drug, pembrolizumab, as a treatment for melanoma. According to Dr. Robert H. Pierce of OncoSec Medical, it is believed that 60 to 70 percent of patients with metastatic melanoma exhibit no response to anti-PD-1 immunotherapy that Merck is developing, so it could be useful to combine it with other forms of immunotherapy. One such alternate form is OncoSec’s ImmunoPulse, which delivers brief electrical pulses of DNA IL-12 and has shown in early studies to date to penetrate and destroy cancer cells.
Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute and the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology have developed a more effective method to determine how T cells differentiate into specialized cell types.
A study published today in Science reports provides a detailed analysis of the microbes that live in houses and apartments.
Scientists at Washington University in St. Louis have obtained the first experimental evidence that there are at least two fail-safe points in the bacterial cell cycle. If the fail-safes are activated, the cell is forced to exit the cell cycle forever. It then enters a zombie-like state and is unable to reproduce even under the most favorable of conditions. Drugs that trigger the fail-safes are already under development.
A 30-year-old unvaccinated male security forces student is the first reported case of spreading the smallpox vaccine virus (vaccinia) across his face by shaving after he had inadvertently acquired the virus during combative training at the largest U.S. Air Force training installation, according to a recently released health surveillance report.
Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center have identified the immune cells responsible for destroying hair follicles in people with alopecia areata, a common autoimmune disease that causes hair loss, and have tested an FDA-approved drug that eliminated these immune cells and restored hair growth in a small number of patients. The results appear in today’s online issue of Nature Medicine.
Advances in the prevention and treatment of an often fatal condition called bacterial meningitis appear to be paying dividends in the United States, report infectious disease experts at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) in the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
Sharpened pencils: check; notebooks and paper: check; school schedule: check. As a parent, this check list may seem familiar to you. It is a clear indication that back-to-school season is here and that means preparing your child for the school year as best as you can. Children’s Hospital Los Angeles is helping you and your child finalize the list by providing top 10 expert tips on keeping your child healthy and safe all year round.
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