Feature Channels: Immunology

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Studies have linked psoriasis and higher weight, but the causal relationship between the two has been unclear. What triggers what?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Scientists have uncovered fresh insights into how vitamin D affects the immune system and might influence susceptibility to diseases such as multiple sclerosis.

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Now research conducted in mice offers new hope that neonatal herpes infections might eventually be avoidable by stimulating an immune response in mothers.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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)

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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.

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Treatment with a choline kinase inhibitor prompts immune cells to clear away damaged mitochondria, thus reducing NLRP3 inflammasome activation and preventing inflammation.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Nationally renowned hematology experts will lead the Multiple Myeloma Program at NYU Langone’s Center for Blood Cancers.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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A new study shows most American allergists now prescribe under-the-tongue allergy tablets for patients to treat certain allergies.

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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.

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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.

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A novel approach appears to be an effective alternative to immunosuppressive therapies for acute and chronic intestinal disease.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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A brain-cancer vaccine more than 20 years in the making suspends cancer growth in patients enrolled in early-stage trial.

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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.

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Final results from the first U.S. clinical study of CIMAvax-EGF show that this Cuban immunotherapy is safe and showed promising efficacy as part of a treatment combination with nivolumab in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer.

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One of the most promising new generations of cancer treatment called Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy is now available for patients at Smilow Cancer Hospital. CAR T-cell therapy is groundbreaking immunotherapy that can cure patients with certain blood cancers who have run out of treatment options.

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Experimenting with mice, Johns Hopkins researchers report they have successfully used positron emission tomography (PET) scans to calculate in real time how much of an immunotherapy drug reaches a tumor and what parts of a cancer remain unaffected.

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Scientists at Johns Hopkins say they have found that people born with abnormally short chromosome endcaps, or telomeres, have immune system cells that age and die prematurely. Their short-lived immune system cells also share some of the same characteristics of immune cells in much older people without the telomere disorder.

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White blood cells known as B cells have been shown to be effective for predicting which cancer patients will respond to immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapy, according to a study at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Study results will be presented April 2 at the AACR Annual Meeting 2019 in Atlanta.

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The Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU), along with Profectus Biosciences, Inc., the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Mapp Biopharmaceutical, Inc., and the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), have been awarded up to $24.5 million to advance treatments for the highly lethal henipaviruses, Nipah and Hendra.

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Researchers using the world’s largest twin registry to study seven autoimmune diseases found the risk of developing the seven diseases is largely inherited, but that some diseases are more closely related than others. These results will be presented Sunday at ENDO 2019, the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting in New Orleans, La.

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Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center’s latest findings in immunotherapies, nanoparticles to deliver gene therapy, the genetic underpinnings of cancer, insights on health disparities and more will be showcased at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research. The conference, “Integrative Cancer Science — Global Impact — Individualized Patient Care,” will be held March 29–April 3 in Atlanta.

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UT Southwestern researchers have identified two proteins that act as gatekeepers to dampen a potentially life-threatening immune response to chronic infection.

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Researchers at Joslin Diabetes Center have uncovered a new mechanism of lifespan extension that links caloric restriction with immune system regulation.

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Researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center revealed the common oncogene KRAS as a possible explanation for why many patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (CRC) do not respond to immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapy.