Experts at Cincinnati Children’s report that the systemic inflammatory process that triggers preterm birth begins in an unexpected location that suggests new ways to develop preventative medications.
Checkpoint inhibitor drugs that stimulate the immune system have become a growing success story in the treatment of some cancers. But about half of patients whose tumors are marked by a large number of mutations from so-called mismatch repair genetic deficiency fail to respond to the drugs.
Scientists at Seattle Children’s Research Institute are paving the way to use gene-edited B cells – a type of white blood cell in the immune system – to treat a wide range of potential diseases that affect children, including hemophilia and other protein deficiency disorders, autoimmune diseases, and infectious diseases.
Researchers at the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center looked at a little-understood type of cell death called ferroptosis. They found ferroptosis occurs in tumor cells and plays a role in cancer immunity, suggesting the potential of targeting this pathway to improve immunotherapy treatments.
Spring cleaning is a great way to give your home a fresh start and give yourself a sense of accomplishment. But it can be hazardous to your health if you don’t take the proper precautions, especially if you have asthma or other chronic lung conditions.
When TET2 and TET3 proteins are genetically deleted from T-regs in mice, their suppressive function is lost over time and animals develop inflammatory disease. More importantly, because these TET2 and TET3 mutant cells had once 'experienced' being a normal T-reg, they behaved very differently.
Cancer cells have various tricks up their metaphorical sleeves to survive in the face of chemotherapy, radiotherapy and other cancer treatments. Now researchers at Mayo have decoded one of those tricks using cell lines and patient-derived cancer cells, and proposed a way to resensitize breast cancer cells to treatment.
Scientists at the UCLA Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research have been awarded a $4.6 million grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine – also known as CIRM – to support a phase I clinical trial of a novel treatment for advanced sarcomas and other cancers with a specific tumor marker called NY-ESO-1.
Many kids with asthma don’t know how to properly use their inhaler. A new study finds that both kids and parents have misplaced confidence in their inhaler technique.
Following a national search, renowned physician-scientist Eric G. Pamer, MD, has been recruited to be the inaugural faculty director of the Duchossois Family Institute at the University of Chicago Medicine starting July 1.
A new report by researchers at La Jolla Institute found that a genetic deletion, or mutation, of TET2 and TET3 in mouse B cells damps down the generation of functional IgG antibodies, decreasing the effectiveness of immune responses.
Folk medicines and herbal products have been used for millennia to combat a whole range of ailments, at times to the chagrin of modern scientists who have struggled to explain their medicinal benefits.
Researchers will receive $17.8 million in federal funding to attack a key “knowledge gap” in human immunology — how B cells and antibody-secreting cells that reside in tissues and organs differ from those found in blood. It is an exploration never undertaken in a systematic way.
The immune system occasionally makes mistakes that require correction. For example, in autoimmunity, T-cells lose "immune tolerance" of self and can destroy one's very own tissues. Conversely, in cancer, the immune system can rapidly exhaust itself in the face of tumor antigens and become unresponsive, allowing tumors to thrive.
University of California San Diego School of Medicine researchers found that treating patients with personalized precision medicine that combined therapies to target multiple alterations improved outcomes in patients with therapy resistant cancers.
Scientists have uncovered fresh insights into how vitamin D affects the immune system and might influence susceptibility to diseases such as multiple sclerosis.
Now research conducted in mice offers new hope that neonatal herpes infections might eventually be avoidable by stimulating an immune response in mothers.
Fluorescent lighting has become one of the most common artificial light sources in use today, but new research from Texas State University suggests there may be unexpected consequences at the genetic level.
UT Southwestern researchers have found that a protein in the body’s innate immune system that responds to gut microbes can suppress the most common type of liver cancer.
Winner of the Preuss Research Award, Maryam Rahman, MD, FAANS, presented her research, titled Modulation of Temozolomide Dose Differentially Affects T cell Response to Immune Checkpoint Inhibition, during the 2019 American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) Annual Scientific Meeting.
Researchers in Chapel Hill, N.C., and Tokyo have discovered a mechanism by which liver cells intrinsic resistance to diverse RNA viruses is regulated. These results have implications for for cellular responses to hepatitis, dengue and Zika.
CAR T-Cell therapy, immunotherapy, and other innovative cancer treatments were the focus of a patient-centered keynote and roundtable discussion at the NCCN 2019 Annual Conference (#NCCNac19)
Researchers developed a novel recombinant vaccine called NIPRAB that shows robust immunization against Nipah virus in animal models and may be effective against other viruses in the same family.
For decades, articles in research journals and the popular press alike have reported that being a family caregiver takes a toll on a person’s health, boosting levels of inflammation and weakening the function of the immune system. Now, after analyzing 30 papers on the levels of immune and inflammatory molecules in caregivers, Johns Hopkins researchers say the link has been overstated and the association is extremely small. Caregiver stress explains less than 1 percent of the variability in immune and inflammation biomarkers, they report. Their new meta-analysis was published March 10 in The Gerontologist.
Researchers have used a molecular “can opener” and advanced imaging to expose parts of the HIV envelope and reveal in detail a previously unknown virus shape with unique vulnerabilities that can be targeted by antibodies. This could open new directions for vaccine development.
Single-cell sequencing reveals 25 subpopulations of myeloid immune cells in lung cancer tumors. Many subpopulations are similar across humans and mice, supporting the use of mouse models in immunotherapy research. Findings set stage to assess myeloid cells as targets for new or improved immunotherapies.
Researchers at the University of Notre Dame have effectively prevented the binding of peanut allergens with IgE to suppress the allergic reaction to peanuts using a first-in-class design of allergen-specific inhibitors.
Researchers at Mount Sinai have developed a novel approach to cancer immunotherapy, injecting immune stimulants directly into a tumor to teach the immune system to destroy it and other tumor cells throughout the body.
Research conducted in mice suggests the food additive tert-butylhydroquinone (tBHQ)—found in many common products from frozen meat to crackers and fried foods—suppresses the immune response the body mounts when fighting the flu.
UC San Francisco researchers have identified a surprising phenomenon that may explain why many cancers don’t respond to certain immunotherapy drugs, and hints at new strategies to unleash the immune system against disease.
A research team that includes Northern Arizona University chemistry professor Naomi Lee received an NIH grant to develop a vaccine that can blunt the effects of drugs by triggering the patient's immune system.
David Berger ’19 is not only getting ready to graduate, but he’s getting ready to move to Austria after getting the news that’s he has received a Fulbright grant to research cancer treatments.
In a first on the quest to cure HIV, University of Pittsburgh scientists report that they’ve developed an all-in-one immunotherapy approach that not only kicks HIV out of hiding in the immune system, but also kills it. The key lies in immune cells designed to recognize an entirely different virus.
Cancer immunotherapy shows surprising successes but also dramatic failures. An emerging activity sensor at Georgia Tech warns clinicians of immunotherapy failures so that they can adjust treatments on time. The sensor is injected intravenously and is read in a urine test.
Announcement of Carl H. June, MD, of the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine is this year's recipient of the Harrington Prize for Innovation in Medicine for advancing the clinical application of CAR T therapy for cancer treatment.
Taking over-the-counter probiotic supplements was associated with a 70 percent lower chance of response to cancer immunotherapy treatment with anti-PD-1 checkpoint inhibitors in melanoma patients, according to a preliminary study from the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy (PICI) and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. The results are being presented April 2 at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) 2019 Annual Meeting in Atlanta.
A study from Sanford Burnham Prebys has demonstrated a causal link between the gut microbiome and the immune system’s ability to fight cancer. The researchers identified a cocktail of 11 bacterial strains that activated the immune system and slowed the growth of melanoma in mice. The study also points to the role of unfolded protein response (UPR), a cellular signaling pathway that maintains protein health (homeostasis). Reduced UPR was seen in melanoma patients who are responsive to immune checkpoint therapy, revealing potential markers for patient stratification. The study was published in Nature Communications.
Moores Cancer Center at UC San Diego Health treats the first patient treated for cancer with a human-induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived cell therapy called FT500. Dan Kaufman collaborated with Fate Therapeutics to bring the iPSC-derived natural killer cell cancer immunotherapy to patients.
The American College of Radiology (ACR) today released the latest edition of the ACR Appropriateness Criteria®, which includes 188 diagnostic imaging and interventional radiology topics with 908 clinical variants covering more than 1,670 clinical scenarios.
In a study that will be published April 1 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, researchers from the Institut Pasteur and INSERM reveal that chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells can induce tumor regression by directly targeting and killing cancer cells, uncovering new details of how these immune cells work and how their effectiveness could be improved in the treatment of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and other B cell cancers.
A study at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center revealed the investigational drug umbralisib as an effective treatment for patients with relapsed marginal zone lymphoma (MZL). Findings from the Phase II trial were presented by study co-lead Nathan Fowler, M.D., associate professor in the Department of Lymphoma & Myeloma, at the AACR Annual Meeting 2019 in Atlanta.
Phase 1b and phase 2 clinical trials examining pembrolizumab for advanced small cell lung cancer who received two or more lines of prior treatment show anti-tumor activity with durable responses and manageable toxicity. Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey's Dr. Janice Mehnert, an investigator on the work, shares more.
Combining immunotherapy with chemotherapy shrank tumors in 20 out of 24 patients with advanced pancreatic cancer, according to early phase 1b data being unveiled at AACR 2019 by Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy (PICI) researchers at the University of Pennsylvania.