Yale Cancer Center (YCC) has launched the Yale Center for Immuno-Oncology (YCIO). The new center will build on YCC’s international leadership in immunobiology, cancer immunology, and development of novel cancer immunotherapies.
UCLA scientists have developed a new method that utilizes microscopic splinter-like structures called “nanospears” for the targeted delivery of biomolecules such as genes straight to patient cells. These magnetically guided nanostructures could enable gene therapies that are safer, faster and more cost-effective.
A Ludwig Cancer Research study shows that ovarian cancer, which has proved resistant to currently available immunotherapies, could be susceptible to personalized immunotherapy. Led by Ludwig Lausanne investigator Alexandre Harari and George Coukos, director of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Lausanne, the study shows that ovarian tumors harbor highly reactive killer T cells—which kill infected and cancerous cells—and demonstrates how they can be identified and selectively grown for use in personalized, cell-based immunotherapies.
In a study conducted in rural India, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers working in collaboration with Bal Umang Drishya Sanstha (BUDS), a nonprofit Indian organization focused on child health, have found that mobile phone reminders linked with incentives such as free talk time minutes work better than phone alerts alone to improve childhood immunization rates in poor communities.
Nearly all school nurses participating in a national survey (96 percent) reported that staff at their school received training on handling severe allergic reactions to food. Over 80 percent asserted that their school had an emergency epinephrine auto-injector on hand to stop a potentially life-threatening allergic reaction. The study findings, published in the Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, also underscore the dire need for these policies, with over one-third of the school nurses reporting at least one severe allergic reaction to food at their school in the last academic year.
The American College of Rheumatology has published a new white paper, “The Science Behind Biosimilars — Entering a New Era of Biologic Therapy,” which shares the organization’s stance that it is reasonable for physicians to begin integrating the prescription of biosimilars as another option of medication in patient treatment, where appropriate. S. Louis Bridges Jr., M.D., Ph.D., director of the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Division of Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology, served as the lead author on the paper.
In a clinical trial at Washington University School of Medicine, Vanderbilt University Medical Center and two medical centers in France, researchers found that a drug that revs up the immune system holds promise in treating sepsis.
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Berkeley Lights, Inc. today announced the launch of Optera Therapeutics Corp, a biopharmaceutical company developing cell therapies with scalable manufacturing solutions for cancer.
A study of mouse healing after severe heart attacks focused on the heart and spleen, measuring types and numbers of immune cells; types and amounts of lipid signaling compounds; expression of enzymes that produce those signaling compounds; and which enzymes are key to resolution of inflammation.
Neurons that carry nerve signals to and from the lungs suppress immune response during fatal lung infections with the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus.
Animal experiments show that disabling these neurons can boost immune response and promote bacterial clearance to aid recovery.
Targeting neuro-immune signaling in the lungs can pave the way to nonantibiotic therapies for bacterial pneumonia.
"The same mechanisms that viruses use to cause cancer may be key in combating tumors with immune-based therapies or in keeping cancer from developing in the first place," says Sharon Kuss-Duerkop, PhD.
Johns Hopkins researchers have invented a new class of cancer immunotherapy drugs that are more effective at harnessing the power of the immune system to fight cancer. This new approach, which was reported in Nature Communications, results in a significant decrease of tumor growth, even against cancers that do not respond to existing immunotherapy.
The American College of Rheumatology (ACR) will hold its annual State-of-the-Art Clinical Symposium (SOTA) in Chicago, IL, on April 13-15, which features groundbreaking rheumatology research and roundtable discussions.
This year’s flu season has been one of the worst in recent memory causing thousands of people to be hospitalized. The virus can be particularly dangerous for young men who can experience nerve damage caused by the body’s response to the flu.
Science continues to peel away layers of the skin microbiome to reveal its protective properties. In a study published in Science Advances on February 28, University of California San Diego School of Medicine researchers report a potential new role for some bacteria on the skin: protecting against cancer.
Researchers from the University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and their collaborators report they modified immune cells to hunt brain tumors displaying a new molecular target, which they determined is highly prevalent on brain cancer cells. Their preclinical studies of immune cells engineered to recognize the target showed promise for controlling tumor growth in mouse and cell models for glioblastoma.
A study in the Journal of Neuroscience reveals that activation of a pregnant mother’s immune system can affect her baby’s brain development. Researchers at CHLA, found that short- and long-term brain functioning can be influenced by immune system activity during the third trimester of gestation.
The February Fred Hutch tip sheet includes story ideas ranging from cancer immunotherapy to cloud computing, flu prevention for cancer patients, cystine-dense peptides found in many deadly venoms, gene therapies, serendipitous findings and more.
Still’s disease is a serious orphan disease manifested by high fevers, skin and joint involvement, including paralysis, as well as damage to other organs such as the liver or spleen.
A special receptor on cells that line the sinuses, throat and lungs evolved to protect mammals from developing a range of allergies and asthma, according to a study from researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The finding “opens up a whole new research area to look at neuroinflammation in the context of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s,” the lead researcher says. “But the clinical impact will be in many, many different areas.”
New research published in the Feb. 23 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry identifies an enzyme that turns off transglutaminase 2, potentially paving the way for new treatments for celiac disease.
We know that germs can make you sick, but if you seem to constantly be under the weather with cold symptoms, could it be something other than germs that are getting you down?
In this issue, find research on gun storage, LARCs and abortion, flu vaccine disparities, air pollution disparities, Brazil birthrate after Zika and more
Researchers describe the role of a transcription factor called TCF-1 in targeting the condensed chromatin and regulating the availability of genome sequences in T-cell development. The new connection between TCF-1 and chromatin will aid in developing new therapies using epigenetic drugs to alter T-cell fate in cancer, autoimmune disorders, and infectious diseases.
Researchers engineered mice in which the damage caused by a mutant human TDP-43 protein could be reversed by one type of brain immune cell. TDP-43 is a protein that misfolds and accumulates in the motor areas of the brains of ALS patients. They found that microglia, the first and primary immune response cells in the brain and spinal cord, are essential for dealing with TDP-43-associated neuron death.
Researchers from the University of Chicago, Harvard University and others show that poor immune responses, not egg adaptions, may explain the low effectiveness of the vaccine that year.
Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease driven by the interplay of genetics, environmental factors and a diverse cast of immune cells. In their latest study, researchers at La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology (LJI) identified a subset of T cells, whose frequency serves as early childhood immune signature that predicts the risk of developing asthma later on.
New prevention and treatment approaches can reduce serious health risks due to peanut allergy in children, according to an article in the March issue of The Nurse Practitioner, published by Wolters Kluwer.
With this year’s severe flu season, one statistic is especially chilling. Each year, around 50 percent of all children under 5 years old who die from the flu were previously healthy, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Adults who die from the flu, on the other hand, typically had a medical condition that increased their risk of mortality. A new study published in the Journal of Immunology offers new insights as to why healthy children are much more vulnerable. It also opens new opportunities for treatment.
New guidelines developed collaboratively by the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) offer clinicians much needed recommendations for assessment and management of side effects related to immune checkpoint inhibitors.
Research in mice pinpoints immune mechanism behind tissue damage and complications of chlamydia infection, the most common sexually transmitted disease in the United States.
Separate immune mechanisms drive bacterial clearance versus immune-mediated tissue damage and subsequent disease.
Therapies are needed to avert irreversible reproductive organ damage that can arise as a result of silent infections that go untreated.
LJI researchers report mechanisms used by a subgroup of ILCs, known as ILC2 cells, to undergo maturation required for them to mount an effective immune response. These discoveries suggest a novel approach to treat inflammatory disease caused by overactive ILC2s.
Analysis of a clinical trial, RTOG Foundation 3504, finds that nivolumab immunotherapy can be administered safely in conjunction with radiation therapy and chemotherapy for patients with newly diagnosed local-regionally advanced head and neck cancers.
Analysis of the phase II CONDOR trial indicates that the immune checkpoint inhibitor durvalumab is tolerable among heavily pre-treated patients with recurrent or metastatic head and neck cancer and has the potential to slow growth in tumors with low or negative expression of the PD-L1 protein.
A common cold virus engineered to attack the most common and deadly of brain tumors allowed 20 percent of patients with recurrent glioblastoma to live for three years or longer, researchers from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center report on a phase I clinical trial in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
ROCHESTER, Minn. — Encephalitis caused by the immune system attacking the brain is similar in frequency to encephalitis from infections, Mayo Clinic researchers report in Annals of Neurology.
Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), a highly aggressive, relapse-prone cancer that accounts for one-fourth of all breast cancers, could be the focus of a new area of study for immune checkpoint blockade therapy. A team of researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center revealed that in TNBC a cell process called glycosylation is required for PD-L1/PD1 molecules to interact and identified exactly how and why glycosylation is so crucial.
Combining an anti-angiogenesis agent, which blocks blood vessel formation, with an immunotherapy agent, was found to have promising anti-tumor activity and no unexpected side effects in an early-phase clinical trial in patients with advanced kidney cancer.
While cancer treatment advances are being made in precision medicine and immunotherapy, a unique combination of traditional therapies can also provide some patients benefit. A Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey expert shares more about an approach combining cytoreductive surgery and hyperthermic chemotherapy for cancers that have spread to the abdominal cavity.
In an effort to combat new HIV infections among men who inject drugs in Vietnam, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill conducted the first study to explore how this population mixes together. Their results were published in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes.
A novel antibody-based therapy that blocks the excessive formation of collagen clusters is safe and effective in multiple animal models of fibrotic disease
Scientists at University of Utah Health believe they identified a mechanism that activates T cells, a key component of the immune system, which could explain the elusive link between a tick bite and persistent Lyme arthritis. The results are published online in the February 5th issue of The Journal of Immunology.
After years of investigation, researchers at Johns Hopkins, the University of California, Davis, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases have discovered how the immune system might protect a person from recurrent bacterial skin infections caused by Staphylococcus aureus (staph).