Feature Channels: Immunology

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The latest research, features and announcements in healthcare in the Healthcare News Source

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A relatively simple effort to provide counseling and connect injection-drug users with resources could prove powerful against the spread of HIV in a notoriously hard-to-reach population, new research suggests.

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The role of insulin as a boost to the immune system to improve its ability to fight infection has been detailed for the first time by Toronto General Hospital Research Institute (TGHRI) scientists.

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High fever. Cough. Runny nose. Red, watery eyes. It may not be the flu. It could be measles.

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The stigma associated with the autoimmune disease psoriasis may lead people to avoid patients who show signs of the condition, including not wanting to date, shake hands, or have people in their homes if they suffer from the disease. New multidisciplinary research involving both psychologists and dermatologists from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania is the first to examine how common this stigma may be among the general population of the United States as well as among medical students.

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Immune reactions are usually a good thing--the body's way of eliminating harmful bacteria and other pathogens.

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Gene therapy holds promise of a potentially safer, more effective path to a cure in infants born without the critical infection-fighting cells of the immune system.Out of every 60,000 births, a baby arrives to face the world without a fully functioning immune system leaving them unequipped to fight even the most common infections.

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Mount Sinai researchers have discovered that a particular type of cell present in bladder cancer may be the reason why so many patients do not respond to the groundbreaking class of drugs known as PD-1 and PD-L1 immune checkpoint inhibitors, which enable the immune system to attack tumors.

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Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have found that crowdsourced campaigns can motivated men at-risk of HIV infection in China to get tested.

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The immune system appears to put a premium on maintaining lung function in infants infected with the influenza virus by mounting a rapid response to repair damaged cells, according to research led by St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

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Interactions between radiation therapy and the immune system can improve cancer treatment. The cellular carnage caused by radiation attracts scavengers, such as dendritic cells, that present cancer cell fragments to T cells. This study suggests novel ways to improve treatment by using radiation to boost immunotherapy.

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Researchers are reporting the protein/protein interactome of Zika virus and its human host cells with a proteomic approach that gives unprecedented insight into membrane-bound protein interactions. The data reveal a new role for a familiar organelle in viral replication.

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A UCLA-led study has found that a treatment that uses a bacteria-like agent in combination with an immunotherapy drug could help some people with advanced melanoma, an aggressive form of skin cancer, live longer.

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Scientists at Scripps Research have developed a urine diagnostic to detect the parasitic worms that cause river blindness, also called onchocerciasis, a tropical disease that afflicts 18 to 120 million people worldwide.

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The parasites that cause malaria make themselves at home inside a host’s red blood cells. An Iowa State University scientist has shown in a pair of newly published articles just how that process works. This new understanding could help to identify new ways to treat malaria.

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The European Commission (EC) has approved a personalized cellular therapy developed at the University of Pennsylvania’s Abramson Cancer Center, making it the first chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy permitted for use in the European Union in two distinct indications.

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Best known as a pathogen that causes food poisoning or steals nutrients away from its host, the E. coli bacterium actually plays a critical role in promoting health by producing a compound that helps cells take up iron.

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CAR T-cell therapy, which reprograms immune cells to fight cancer, has shown great promise in people with some blood cancers who have not responded to other treatments. But until now, the underlying biological pathways enabling anti-cancer responses have not been thoroughly examined.

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An international research group, which included an ISU scientist, has proven that three proteins that can help prevent the spread of HIV can be expressed in transgenic rice plants. Using plants as a production platform could provide a cost-effective means of producing prophylactics, particularly in the developing world.

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Researchers at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) have discovered that a type of immune cell known as Langerhans appears to play an important role in photosensitivity, an immune system reaction to sunlight that can trigger severe skin rashes.

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Muscles of the elderly and of patients with Duchene muscular dystrophy have trouble regenerating. A new nanohydrogel with muscle stem cells has boosted muscle growth in mouse models while protecting the stem cells from immune reactions that usually weaken or destroy them.

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Discoveries by two HHMI investigators show how proteins that organize into liquid droplets inside cells make certain biological functions possible.

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You may not want to think about fall allergies, but if you start planning now, your allergy symptoms will likely be much less severe, and you’ll be able to enjoy the beauty the fall season brings.

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For the first time, Mount Sinai researchers have identified a way to make large numbers of immune cells that can help prevent cancer reoccurrence, according to a study published in August in Cell Reports.

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New research from Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM) scientists into the health risks of space radiation exposure shows a potential greater risk than previously thought.

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Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (SCCA) / University of Washington Medical Center (UWMC) is ranked among the best in the nation for adult cancer care by U.S. News & World Report for 2018-2019.

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PHOENIX ─ Mayo Clinic Hospital, Phoenix, Arizona is again ranked No. 1 in Arizona and the Phoenix metro area, and No. 11 nationally by U.S. News & World Report. This marks the second time Mayo Clinic has been recognized with two hospitals on U.S. News & World Report's "Best Hospitals Honor Roll," which includes the top 20 hospitals in the nation. Mayo Clinic’s campus in Rochester, Minnesota, ranked No. 1 nationally. The results were announced today on the U.S. News & World Report web site.

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Researchers at Duke Cancer Institute have tracked the missing T-cells in glioblastoma patients. They found them in abundance in the bone marrow, locked away and unable to function because of a process the brain stimulates in response to glioblastoma, to other tumors that metastasize in the brain and even to injury.

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Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey now has additional resources in the fight against pediatric cancers and blood disorders, thanks to a $1 million commitment from Embrace Kids Foundation that will support the recruitment of pediatric cancer research faculty.

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Although immunotherapy is seen as a very promising treatment for cancer, currently only 20 to 30 percent of patients respond positively. Being able to identify the people most likely to benefit from the costly therapy is a Holy Grail for oncologists.

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Checkpoint inhibitor therapies have made metastatic melanoma and other cancers a survivable condition for 20 to 30 percent of treated patients, but clinicians have had very limited ways of knowing which patients will respond. Researchers have uncovered a novel mechanism by which tumors suppress the immune system. Their findings also usher in the possibility that a straightforward blood test could predict and monitor cancer patients’ response to immunotherapy.

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Mice deficient in innate lymphoid cells are vulnerable to lethal infection by the bacterial pathogen Yersinia enterocolitica (YE), which causes some forms of food poisoning. Moreover, activation by a cytokine called LIGHT, which is a member of the tumor necrosis factor (TNF) superfamily, is necessary for ILCs to mount an anti-bacterial response.

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In the age of Big Data, cancer researchers are discovering new ways to monitor the effectiveness of immunotherapy treatments.

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Johns Hopkins scientists report they have identified two potential new drug targets for the treatment of HIV. The finding is from results of a small, preliminary study of 19 people infected with both HIV—the virus that causes AIDS—and the hepatitis C virus. The study revealed that two genes—CMPK2 and BCLG, are selectively activated in the presence of type 1 interferon, a drug once used as the first line of treatment against hepatitis C.

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Researchers have found an important contributor to heart pathology caused by the cancer drug doxorubicin — disruption of metabolism that controls immune responses in the spleen and heart. This allows chronic, non-resolving inflammation that leads to advanced heart failure.

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A mouse mother's prior dengue immunity would protects her unborn pups from devastating brain defects such as microencephaly associated with ZIKV. These findings could guide development of more effective flavivirus vaccines and hint at what types of immune responses are maximally protective against fetal brain damage after Zika invasion.

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With the start of the school year just around the corner, it is easy to overlook one of the most important things on any back-to-school checklist — making sure your child is vaccinated.

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Researchers at the Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy in the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center discovered inhibiting a previously known protein could reduce tumor burdens and enhance the effectiveness of immunotherapy treatments.

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Ortho Clinical Diagnostics, a global leader of in vitro diagnostics, announced that its VITROS Immunodiagnostic Products HIV Combo Reagent Pack and Calibrator (VITROS® HIV Combo test) received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use on Ortho’s VITROS 3600 Immunodiagnostic System

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Ortho Clinical Diagnostics received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for Ortho’s VITROS® Immunodiagnostic Products HBeAg Assay and the VITROS® Immunodiagnostic Products Anti-HBe Assay for use on the VITROS® 3600 Immunodiagnostic System and VITROS® 5600 Integrated System

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Ortho Clinical Diagnostics, a global leader of in vitro diagnostics, announced an international distribution and co-promotion agreement with Thermo Fisher Scientific to provide 14 assays used to monitor therapeutic drugs, immunosuppressive drugs and drugs of abuse.

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A team led by scientists from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has sequenced and annotated the first complete mitochondrial genome of Anopheles funestus, one of the main vectors of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa.

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Researchers at Columbia found that a gene associated with an autoimmune form of hair loss may be activated to boost cancer immunotherapy.

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A common class of drugs used to treat diabetes exerts a powerful check on macrophages by controlling the metabolic fuel they use to generate energy. Keeping macrophages from going overboard on the job may inhibit the onset of obesity and diabetes following tissue inflammation.

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FNIH has selected CRI to be its source of landscape intelligence in immuno-oncology, also called cancer immunotherapy

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An increase in the Lone Star tick population since 2006, and the ability to recognize the ticks as the source of “alpha gal” allergy to red meat has meant significantly more cases of anaphylaxis being properly identified.

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Immune cells that normally rush in to protect the eyes from infection might actually be disrupting moisturizing glands and causing dry eye, a disease that afflicts more than 30 million people in the United States.

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The American Thoracic Society led 10 medical professional organizations in filing an amicus brief last week regarding the FDA’s failure to apply pre-market review to new tobacco products. The brief was submitted in support of the American Academy of Pediatrics and its co-plaintiffs and outlines the compelling data indicating that the FDA’s failure to act harms children.

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John Wherry, PhD, has been appointed the new chair of the department of Systems Pharmacology and Translational Therapeutics at Penn. He is an international leader in the study of T cell exhaustion, which prevents optimal control of infections and can hamper anti-tumor immune responses.

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A group of scientists at Texas Biomedical Research Institute have zeroed in on a new defense against HIV-1, the virus that causes AIDS. Led by Ruth Ruprecht, M.D., Ph.D., the team used an animal model to show for the first time that an antibody called Immunoglobulin M (IgM) was effective in preventing infection after mucosal AIDS virus exposure.