Feature Channels: Immunology

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A highly innovative, personalized cell-based treatment for a high-risk form of the most common childhood cancer continues to move through clinical trials. Pediatric oncologists from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) today reported new results using T cell immunotherapy against relapsed or refractory acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).

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In a small, early phase trial, a high percentage of patients who had exhausted most traditional treatments for chronic lymphocytic leukemia saw their tumors shrink or even disappear after an infusion of a highly targeted, experimental CAR T-cell immunotherapy developed at Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

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Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) will present the latest advances from their studies of personalized cellular therapies for blood cancers during the 58th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) in San Diego.

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A new drug has been approved by the FDA in the fight against lung cancer. Tecentriq is being used by patients like Cornelius Bresnan, who had late-stage cancer.

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Working with human immune cells in the laboratory, Johns Hopkins researchers report they have identified a critical cellular "off" switch for the inflammatory immune response that contributes to lung-constricting asthma attacks. The switch, they say, is composed of regulatory proteins that control an immune signaling pathway in cells.

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Previous studies identified the Hippo pathway kinases LATS1/2 as a tumor suppressor, but new research led by University of California San Diego School of Medicine scientists reveals a surprising role for these enzymes in subduing cancer immunity. The findings could have a clinical role in improving efficiency of immunotherapy drugs.

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PHILADELPHIA—An existing drug known as a JAK inhibitor may help patients who don’t respond to the so-called checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapy drugs overcome that resistance, suggests a new preclinical study published online in Cell today by Penn Medicine researchers.  Importantly, the results demonstrate that shutting down the interferon pathway, shown here to be critical to a tumor’s resistance to immunotherapy, with a JAK inhibitor may improve checkpoint inhibitor drugs and even bypass the need for combinations of these drugs, which often come with serious side effects.

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Until now, a pathogen’s ability to move through the body has been overlooked as a possible trigger of immune response, but new research from the University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine found that motility will indeed alarm the host and activate an immune response.

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New collaboration between two nonprofits focused on cancer immunotherapy aims to identify new DNA-based targets for personalized cancer treatments

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A new clinical study underway at Roswell Park Cancer Institute is the first to test the combination of the immunotherapy pembrolizumab with two other drugs as treatment for recurrent epithelial ovarian cancer, and is also the first ovarian cancer clinical trial to incorporate analysis of patients’ microbiomes

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Using targeted immunotherapy, doctors have succeeded in curing a type of autoimmune enteritis caused by a recently discovered genetic mutation. This report comes from researchers at the Department of Biomedicine of the University of Basel and University Hospital Basel. Their results raise new possibilities for the management of diarrhea, which is often a side effect of melanoma treatment.

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Low social status alone can alter immune regulation, even in the absence of variation in access to resources, health care, and at-risk behaviours for health. This is the conclusion of a new Canadian-American study published in Science.

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Following hip fracture increases after a reduction in reimbursement rates for DXA scans led to fewer scans, a UAB physician joined other advocates and successfully lobbied to increase DXA scan reimbursements to better identify and reduce hip fractures.

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Researchers at Mayo Clinic Center for Individualized Medicine have discovered a potential cause and a promising new treatment for inflammatory myofibroblastic tumors, a rare soft tissue cancer that does not respond to radiation or chemotherapy.

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Immunotherapy continues to revolutionize the field of non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), with researchers now focusing on the optimal use of immune agents in the frontline setting.

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The World Stem Cell Summit & RegMed Capital Conference has invited five faculty members from the Nova Southeastern University (NSU) Cell Therapy Institute to present on their research related to advancing new approaches to cancer immunotherapy and regenerative medicine at the organization’s 12th annual meeting.

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Researchers from around the country who are studying alcohol’s negative effects on the body discussed their latest findings during a meeting at Loyola University Chicago’s Health Sciences campus.

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Researchers at the University of Cincinnati (UC) have discovered that an ion channel, active within T cells (white blood cells), could be targeted to reduce the growth of head and neck cancers.

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Therapies designed to help the body's immune system attack cancer cells are proving to be effective for some patients with advanced cases of the disease.

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Photoimmunotherapy blows up tumors, spares healthy cells By Charles Jolie Nov. 14, 2016 When Kerstin Stenson, MD, describes the innovative technique she is helping develop to fight cancer, it seems like she’s describing a Tom Clancy military espionage novel. Stenson is treating patients with photoimmunotherapy, PIT for short, an experimental technique that combines the immune system’s ability to target cancer cells precisely with laser energy’s ability to destroy those cells.

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Jeffrey S. Weber, MD, PhD, deputy director of NYU Langone’s Perlmutter Cancer Center, has received a 2016 “Giants of Cancer Care” Award, presented by OncLive, a professional organization for oncologists.

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Virginia Tech scientists have developed a new cancer drug that uses gold nanoparticles created by the biotech firm CytImmune Sciences to deliver paclitaxel — a commonly used chemotherapy drug directly to a tumor.

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The gut microbiomes of patients with antiphospholipid syndrome show higher levels of phospholipid-producing bacteria, and this findings point to microbes being a trigger for this life-threatening disease, according to new research findings presented this week at the 2016 ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting in Washington.

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TSRI Researchers Believe Cell Population May Provide a New Cancer Drug Target

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A study led by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), in collaboration with scientists at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR), Janssen Vaccines & Prevention B.V., one of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson and Gilead Sciences, Inc., has demonstrated that combining an experimental vaccine with an innate immune stimulant may help lead to viral remission in people living with HIV. In animal trials, the combination decreased levels of viral DNA in peripheral blood and lymph nodes, and improved viral suppression and delayed viral rebound following discontinuation of anti-retroviral therapy (ART). The research team’s findings appeared online today in the journal Nature.

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Immunotherapy has revolutionized treatment options in oncology, neurology, and many infectious diseases and now there is fresh hope that the same method could be used to treat or even functionally cure HIV, according to two related studies from Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

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A Ludwig Cancer Research study shows that an experimental drug currently in clinical trials can reverse the effects of troublesome cells that prevent the body’s immune system from attacking tumors.

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Baylor Scott & White Research Institute will be home to one of four new Centers of Research Translation, or CORTs. National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases will fund $8.5 million over five years toward the center’s research, which aims to better understand the development of severe lupus in children and could ultimately lead to new personalized treatments.

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University of California, Irvine and MIT researchers have developed a new strategy to immunize against microbes that invade the gastrointestinal tract, including Salmonella, which causes more foodborne illness in the United States than any other bacteria.

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Many cancer patients respond favorably to immunotherapies, but most do not. Blame for treatment failures is usually attributed to so-called “cold” tumors, thought to lack key targets able to provoke an immune response. Two studies in the Nov. 7 issue of PNAS shift the focus to other factors.

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The team evaluated 15 randomized controlled trials published between 2011 and 2015, assessing the benefits and harms of targeted or immune checkpoint inhibitors in 6,662 patients with cancer that had spread to the lymph nodes and surgery was not an option, or distant metastatic melanoma.

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The Ottawa Hospital, the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO), the University of Ottawa (uOttawa) and McMaster University congratulate Turnstone Biologics Inc. (Turnstone) on securing $41.4 million U.S. in new private investments.

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Researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine have developed an experimental vaccine to battle melanoma, a deadly form of skin cancer. It’s an example of cutting-edge immunotherapy, the harnessing of the immune system’s power to battle disease. But it also represents a fulfillment of potential UVA recognized 25 years ago. In 1991, with financial support from businessman Beirne B.

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The cornerstone of genetics is the loss-of-function experiment. In short, this means that to figure out what exactly gene X is doing in a tissue of interest—be it developing brain cells or a pancreatic tumor—you somehow cut out, switch off or otherwise destroy gene X in that tissue and then watch what happens. That genetic litmus test has been applied since before people even knew the chemical DNA is what makes up genes. What has changed radically are the tools used by biologists to inactivate a gene.

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Researchers in Japan have discovered that the adrenergic nervous system controls when white blood cells circulate through the body, boosting the immune response by retaining T and B cells in lymph nodes at the time of day when they are most likely to encounter foreign antigens. The study, “Adrenergic control of the adaptive immune response by diurnal lymphocyte recirculation through lymph nodes,” will be published online October 31 ahead of issue in The Journal of Experimental Medicine.

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The recent approval of pembrolizumab (Keytruda) in recurrent or metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) following progression on a platinum-based chemotherapy was a significant advancement for the disease. However, Barbara A. Burtness, MD, said, the approval of the PD-1 inhibitor only scratches the surface of the potential of immunotherapies in head and neck cancer.

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A recent Cochrane Review has found evidence from randomised trials, that taking an oral vitamin D supplement in addition to standard asthma medication is likely to reduce severe asthma attacks.

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SLU researchers report new findings about how the immune system directs T cells to learn tolerance for the body's own cells.

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An innovative, new, patient-driven natural history registry for the rare and poorly understood immune system disorder Castleman disease (CD) will propel care and research for CD through a collaborative research agreement between Janssen Research & Development, LLC; the Castleman Disease Collaborative Network (CDCN); and the University of Pennsylvania.

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A new method to determine how effectively immune cells kill their targets could help personalize immune therapies.

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Asthma caused by adult exposure to cockroach detritus is blocked in mice that were vaccinated as newborns with a particular bacteria, Enterobacter that expresses alpha-1,3-glucan molecules on its surface.

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The Latest in Cell Biology News

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Spurred by NYS Trade Mission to Cuba in 2015, Buffalo cancer center will conduct a clinical trial with CIMAvax-EGF, groundbreaking immunotherapy for lung cancer developed in Cuba — becoming the first American center to receive FDA authorization to sponsor a clinical trial offering a Cuban-made therapy to U.S. patients — and will work to speed this and other innovative therapies to patients worldwide through a historic new business venture with Cuban research institute

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SASKATOON - University of Saskatchewan (U of S) scientists have developed a new immunotherapy technique that nearly eliminates the allergic response to peanut and egg white proteins in food-allergic mice, reducing the anaphylactic response by up to 90 per cent with only one treatment.

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Pembrolizumab, an immunotherapy drug that was extensively evaluated by UCLA cancer researcher Dr. Edward Garon, has been approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration as first-line treatment for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The first-line designation means that some patients will have access to the drug without first having to receive other treatments such as chemotherapy.

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With the goal of advancing a powerful cancer treatment strategy that uses immune cells to fight the disease, benefactors Ellen and Gary Davis have generously made a $2 million gift to Weill Cornell Medicine to drive ongoing research in immunotherapy, the institution announced today.

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José R. Conejo-Garcia, M.D., Ph.D. has joined Moffitt Cancer Center as co-leader of the Immunology Program and chair of the Department of Immunology.

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Scientists at the University of Basel discovered a fundamental new mechanism explaining the inadequate immune defense against chronic viral infection. These results may open up new avenues for vaccine development. They have been published in the journal “Science Immunology”.

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Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have discovered that Zika virus infection leads to modifications of both viral and human genetic material. These modifications — chemical tags known as methyl groups — influence viral replication and the human immune response.