Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center announced its first-ever grants from its newly established Evergreen Fund to spur researchers’ efforts to advance bold ideas toward creating or partnering with a commercial entity.
In findings they call counterintuitive, a team of UCLA-led researchers suggests that blocking a protein, which is crucial to initiating the immune response against viral infections, may actually help combat HIV.
Researchers at Yale Cancer Center and Yale Medicine have identified the critical target of new immune-checkpoint therapies: subsets of immune cells called tissue resident memory (TRM) T cells. In the same research, scientists also found that individual metastatic cancer lesions contain unique sets of TRM cells.
In experiments on mice with a form of aggressive brain cancer, Johns Hopkins researchers have shown that localized chemotherapy delivered directly to the brain rather than given systemically may be the best way to keep the immune system intact and strong when immunotherapy is also part of the treatment.
Positive results of an investigational medication study for primary progressive multiple sclerosis were published online in today’s New England Journal of Medicine in a paper led by senior author Jerry Wolinsky, M.D., of McGovern Medical School at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth).
By combining two treatment strategies, both aimed at boosting the immune system’s killer T cells, Johns Hopkins researchers report they lengthened the lives of mice with skin cancer more than by using either strategy on its own. And, they say, because the combination technique is easily tailored to different types of cancer, their findings — if confirmed in humans — have the potential to enhance treatment options for a wide variety of cancer patients.
Scientists have used systems biology tools to map out molecular pathways and signaling circuits that come into play when the immune system acts against infections and cancer. Important immune cells, called CD8+ T cells, play a pivotal role in immune response, but their gene regulatory circuits have not been well understood.
Researchers have found that sunlight, through a mechanism separate than vitamin D production, energizes T cells that play a central role in human immunity. The findings suggest how the skin, the body’s largest organ, stays alert to the many microbes that can nest there.
New research identifies an inflammatory pathway in women that could help explain why they develop autoimmune diseases at a much higher rate than men.
In a bid to better understand the gene expression patterns that control T cell activity, researchers at the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology mapped genome-wide changes in chromatin accessibility as T cells respond to acute and chronic virus infections.
A University of Colorado Cancer Center paper published today in the journal Nature Nanotechnology details how the immune system recognizes nanoparticles, potentially paving the way to counteract or avoid this detection.
Yvonne J. Paterson, PhD, a professor of Microbiology in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, has been elected a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. Fellows are named inventors on U.S. patents. Election to fellow status recognizes academic inventors who have “demonstrated a prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development, and the welfare of society.”
A rare and potent type of immune cell has been discovered around the brain, suggesting the cells may play a critical role in battling Alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis and other diseases. By harnessing the cells' power, doctors may be able to develop new treatments for disease, traumatic brain injury and spinal cord injuries – even migraines.
In recent years, researchers have identified specific gene mutations linked to gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST), which primarily occur in the stomach or small intestine, but 10 to 15 percent of adult GIST cases and most pediatric cases lack the tell-tale mutations, making identification and treatment difficult. Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Moores Cancer Center have identified new gene fusions and mutations associated with this subset of GIST patients.
Mount Sinai researchers have solved the mystery of how deadly breast cancer metastasis forms without a tumor present.
One of the largest gifts ever to the Indiana University School of Medicine will enable researchers to harness the power of the immune system to cure cancer and other devastating diseases -- propelling Indiana’s standing as an engine for biomedical discovery and innovation.
Northwestern University synthetic biologists have developed a technology for engineering customized immune cells to build programmable therapeutics.
The chronic lung inflammation that is a hallmark of cystic fibrosis, has, for the first time, been linked to a new class of bacterial enzymes that hijack the patient’s immune response and prevent the body from calling off runaway inflammation, according to a laboratory investigation led by the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
A major challenge in truly targeted cancer therapy is cancer’s suppression of the immune system. Northwestern University synthetic biologists now have developed a general method for “rewiring” immune cells to flip this action around. When cancer is present, molecules secreted at tumor sites render many immune cells inactive. The Northwestern researchers genetically engineered human immune cells to sense the tumor-derived molecules in the immediate environment and to respond by becoming more active, not less.
Joseph Baar, MD, PhD, Director of Breast Cancer Research at UH Seidman Cancer Center and Associate Professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, shared details about a phase II clinical trial testing the effectiveness of combining the chemotherapy drugs carboplatin and nab-paclitaxel with an immunotherapeutic agent called pembrolizumab (Keytruda) for use in patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer. Dr. Baar’s poster presentation was part of the Ongoing Trials-Targeted Therapy session on Dec. 8, 2016.
Leaders from Fred Hutch, Seattle Cancer Care Alliance and Juno Therapeutics will speak on immunotherapy's roots in Seattle, new clinical trials and the prospects for developing new cures for cancer during a Dec. 12 scientific symposium to celebrate the opening of the first-of-its-kind clinic
A genomic analysis study by Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey investigators and other colleagues has identified recurrent genomic alterations in a subset of breast cancer that are typically associated with a form of thyroid cancer and an intestinal birth defect known as Hirschsprung disease.
Two new studies out of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine describe how the inflammatory response to psoriasis can alter levels of several immune system molecules, ultimately increasing a person’s risk of thrombosis, which can include fatal blood clots
Researchers at the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at University of California San Diego have now determined the 3D structure of CCR2 simultaneously bound to two inhibitors. Understanding how these molecules fit together may better enable pharmaceutical companies to develop anti-inflammatory drugs that bind and inhibit CCR2 in a similar manner. The study is published December 7 by Nature.
Two nonprofits team up to fund immunotherapy research designed to benefit patients with an ultra-rare form of liver cancer.
A team of scientists led by Julie Saba, MD, PhD at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland, has unveiled a novel role of thymic dendritic cells, which could result in new strategies to treat conditions such as autoimmune diseases, immune deficiencies, prematurity, infections, cancer, and the loss of immunity after bone marrow transplantation.
The combination of two new drugs that harness the body’s immune system is safe and effective, destroying most cancer cells in 64 percent of patients with recurrent Hodgkin lymphoma, according to the results of an early-phase study.
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center announced promising results from an early trial in which patients with high-risk acute myeloid leukemia received genetically engineered immune cells. Of the 12 AML patients who received this experimental T-cell therapy after a transplant put their disease in remission, all are still in remission after a median follow-up of more than two years.
Doctors at Yale believe immunotherapy is causing a new type of acute-onset diabetes, with at least 17 cases so far.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
New collaboration between two nonprofits focused on cancer immunotherapy aims to identify new DNA-based targets for personalized cancer treatments
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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