Feature Channels: Immunology

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A novel antibody-based therapy that blocks the excessive formation of collagen clusters is safe and effective in multiple animal models of fibrotic disease

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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.

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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).

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Late breaking abstracts

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Clinical application of cancer fighting nanovaccines has been hampered by complications in large-scale manufacturing, quality control, and safety. Biomedical engineers developed nanovaccines that bind to the albumin protein naturally present in the body. The albumin protein then delivers these nanocomplexes to the lymph nodes, resulting in potent immune activation against multiple tumor types in mouse cancer models. The use of natural albumin as a universal vaccine shuttle is a significant step towards the application of cancer nanovaccine immunotherapy in humans.

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The University of Alabama at Birmingham's 1917 Clinic celebrates 30 years of treatment for those living with HIV. In it's first year, the clinic saw just 100 people but three decades later, the clinic has served more than 12,000 patients. The need for care has enabled the 1917 Clinic to be the largest HIV medical provider in the state, as well as a national leader in care.

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New drugs that activate the immune system to target cancer cells have improved the lives of many patients with cancer. However, immunotherapies are not effective in all patients, and the success of these therapies depends on individual patient factors. A team of Moffitt Cancer Center researchers is trying to find new ways to further enhance the activity of the immune system against cancer. In an article published in the January issue of Cancer Cell, the researchers describe how a new type of immunotherapy drug targeting the protein TIM-3 works to stimulate the immune system.

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Scientists discovered how a gene mutation affects T cell function to promote immune disorders and then tested a treatment based on the discovery—successfully fixing donated immune cells from a 16-year-old boy with an abnormally low level of white blood cells called lymphopenia. Researchers report their findings Jan. 30 in Nature Communications

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A University of Colorado Cancer Center study published in the journal Pediatric Blood Cancers lays the scientific groundwork for the use of PD-1 inhibitors with an aggressive form of brain cancer, namely supratentorial pediatric ependymoma.

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The Weizmann Institute of Science's Prof. Rotem Sorek has conducted a systematic study that uncovered multiple new and unusual bacterial immune defense mechanisms which could pave the way toward new biotech tools

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A newly discovered family of viruses appears to play a major role in killing marine bacteria and maintaining the ocean’s ecology. Preliminary evidence suggests that related bacterial viruses also occur in the human gut. The study, by researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), was published online today in the journal Nature.

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A new position paper by the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology provides guidance to allergists interested in providing telemedicine care to their patients.

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Researchers have developed a universal vaccine to combat influenza A viruses that produces long-lasting immunity in mice and protects them against the limitations of seasonal flu vaccines, according to a study led by Georgia State University.

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La Jolla Institute Professor Dr. Alessandro Sette has been awarded a $340,000 grant by The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF) to follow up on an earlier MJFF-supported study, which provided the strongest evidence to date that autoimmunity plays a role in Parkinson’s disease.

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Researchers at The Ohio State University and their colleagues have demonstrated how rising temperatures and acidification combine to destabilize different populations of coral microbes—that is, unbalance the natural coral “microbiome."

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La Jolla Institute scientists provide new insights into how so-called CD4 cytotoxic T cells arise in humans and thus could facilitate improved vaccine design.

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A research team at GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences found that latent HIV reservoirs exhibit resistance to elimination by CD8+ T-cells of people living with the virus.

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A new original research article in SLAS Discovery presents a fast, sensitive, and robust methodology for screening small molecule inhibitors against CD73/Ecto-5’-Nucleotidase, a promising target for developing anti-cancer drugs.

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In a study published today in the scientific journal Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science, Kaufman and Curtis Brandt, a fellow professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences at UW-Madison, showed an improved tactic for delivering new genes into the eye's fluid drain, called the trabecular meshwork. It could lead to a treatment for glaucoma.

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New research finds that PDL-1 expressed in antigen presenting cells – macrophages and dendritic cells found in the tumor microenvironment and in the nearby lymph nodes -- is a better indicator than PDL-1 in the tumor of who will respond to immunotherapy drugs.

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People who survive brain infection with West Nile virus can have neurological problems long after the virus is gone. A new study in mice suggests that such ongoing problems may be due to unresolved inflammation that hinders the brain's ability to repair damaged neurons and grow new ones. Reducing inflammation with an arthritis drug protected mice from West Nile-induced memory loss.

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A research team at the Duke Cancer Institute has found a new way to keep the immune system engaged, and is planning to test the approach in a phase 1 clinical trial.

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Researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have identified a new therapeutic target for the treatment of melanoma. For decades, research has associated female sex and a history of previous pregnancy with better outcomes after a melanoma diagnosis. Now, a research team from Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania says it may have determined the reason for the melanoma-protective effect.

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A team of researchers has developed an ultrasound-based system that can non-invasively and remotely control genetic processes in live immune T cells so that they recognize and kill cancer cells.

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The field of immunotherapy – the harnessing of patients’ own immune systems to fend off cancer – is revolutionizing cancer treatment today. However, clinical trials often show marked improvements in only small subsets of patients, suggesting that as-yet unidentified variations among tumors result in distinct paths of disease progression and response to therapy.

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In the January 12, 2017 Scientific Reports, a research team describes early tests of a minimally-invasive way to assess myelin damage—the hallmark of multiple sclerosis—using positron emission tomography (PET). This approach could be used to follow MS lesions over time.

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Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, with colleagues across the country and around the world, have used whole genome analyses and chemogenetics to identify new drug targets and resistance genes in 262 parasite cell lines of Plasmodium falciparum — protozoan pathogens that cause malaria — that are resistant to 37 diverse antimalarial compounds.

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Canadian researchers’ innovative work promises to make vaccines more effective against tuberculosis and other infectious diseases like the flu.

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Desmoplastic melanoma is a rare subtype of melanoma that is commonly found on sun-exposed areas, such as the head and neck, and usually seen in older patients. Treatment is difficult because these tumors are often resistant to chemotherapy and lack actionable mutations commonly found in other types of melanoma that are targeted by specific drugs. However, Moffitt Cancer Center researchers report in the Jan. 10 issue of Nature that patients with desmoplastic melanoma are more responsive to immune-activating anti-PD-1/PD-L1 therapies than previously assumed.

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In a UCLA-led study, more than two-thirds of people with a rare type of melanoma responded positively to treatment with anti-PD-1 immunotherapies.

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Scientists at the Keck School of Medicine of USC use enzymes responsible for marine animal bioluminescence to help researchers test whether cancer immunotherapies work.

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Johns Hopkins scientists have used a form of artificial intelligence to create a map that compares types of cellular receptors, the chemical “antennas” on the surface of immune system T-cells. Their experiments with lab-grown mouse and human T-cells suggest that people with cancer who have a greater variety of such receptors may respond better to immunotherapy drugs and vaccines.

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A common, inexpensive drug that is used to prevent heart attacks and lower blood pressure may also help melanoma patients live longer.

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An article in the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists’ AANA Journal, “Lyme Disease and Anesthesia Considerations,” discusses possible effects of anesthesia on Lyme disease patients undergoing surgery.

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Two research groups from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have independently discovered a genetic mechanism in cancer cells that influences whether they resist or respond to immunotherapy drugs known as checkpoint inhibitors. The scientists say the findings reveal potential new drug targets and might aid efforts to extend the benefits of immunotherapy treatment to more patients and additional types of cancer.

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Specific strains of intestinal bacteria can improve the response rate to immunotherapy for patients being treated for advanced melanoma. Patients with a higher ratio of “beneficial” bacteria to “non-beneficial” bacteria all showed a clinical response: a reduction in tumor size.

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A newly published Atopic Dermatitis (AD) Yardstick from the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology has practical recommendations for physicians about the treatment of AD.

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Researchers at UC San Diego have developed macrophage "nanosponges"—nanoparticles cloaked in the cell membranes of macrophages—that can safely remove sepsis-causing molecules from the bloodstream. In lab tests, these macrophage nanosponges improved survival rates in mice with sepsis.

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Duke Health researchers, publishing in the Jan. 4 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, found significantly improved survival among patients with a severe form of scleroderma who underwent chemotherapy, whole body radiation and a stem cell transplant. Patients also had less need for immune suppressant drugs after transplant.

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Johns Hopkins researchers have discovered a cell signaling pathway in mice that triggers vision loss in patients with diabetic retinopathy and retinal vein occlusion – diseases characterized by the closure of blood vessels in the retina, leading to blindness. In experiments that suppressed vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in the eye, researchers were able to re-establish normal blood flow in the retina, offering a potential means of stalling or even reversing diabetes-related blindness.

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Through gene therapy, researchers engineered blood-forming stem cells (hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells, or HSPCs) to carry chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) genes to make cells that can detect and destroy HIV-infected cells. These engineered cells persisted for more than two years

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The development of an HIV vaccine has proven extraordinarily difficult. One of the reasons is that naïve precursor B cells that can give rise to mature B cells producing broadly neutralizing antibodies are exceedingly rare within the average human. Yet, despite their low frequency these B cell precursors can outcompete their B cell competitors under the right conditions.

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A Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory biomedical technology that can deliver vaccines and drugs inside the human body has been licensed for use in cancer treatments to a Michigan company.

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The "mutational burden," or the number of mutations present in a tumor's DNA, is a good predictor of whether that cancer type will respond to a class of cancer immunotherapy drugs known as checkpoint inhibitors, a new study led by Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center researchers shows. The finding, published in the Dec. 21 New England Journal of Medicine, could be used to guide future clinical trials for these drugs.

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Nearly a century after the influenza pandemic of 1918–1919 ravaged communities worldwide, the threat of another pandemic looms large as the scientific and global health communities find ways to prepare for, and battle, future outbreaks.

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An updated practice parameter from the Joint Task Force on Practice Parameters stresses that people with egg allergy should receive their yearly flu shot, and that no special precautions are required.

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Allergy specialists like Dr. Shelly Harvey are again readying themselves for mountain cedar, the annual irritant that makes noses run and eyes itch – potentially transforming the merriest of holiday well-wishers into miserable Ebenezer Scrooges.

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The most lethal form of breast cancer could have a new treatment option, according to new research out of the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. In the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers showed triple-negative breast cancer cells are highly vulnerable to interferon-β—a potent antimicrobial that also activates the immune system. The new study shows interferon-β impairs breast cancer cells’ ability to migrate and form tumors. The study also suggests interferon-β treatment could improve outcomes for certain breast cancer patients.