Feature Channels: Immunology

• share
• favorite_border

In a new study that compared people with and without asthma, researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found no difference in the key immune response to viruses in the lungs and breathing passages. The work suggests that a fundamental antiviral defense mechanism is intact in asthma. This means that another aspect of the immune system must explain the difficulty people with asthma have when they encounter respiratory viruses.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers open a new page in the immune system's playbook, discovering more chatter goes on among the body's infection fighters than was suspected.

• share
• favorite_border

Expert is available to comment on the impending likely approval of Merck & Co.’s immuno-oncology drug, pembrolizumab, as a treatment for melanoma. According to Dr. Robert H. Pierce of OncoSec Medical, it is believed that 60 to 70 percent of patients with metastatic melanoma exhibit no response to anti-PD-1 immunotherapy that Merck is developing, so it could be useful to combine it with other forms of immunotherapy. One such alternate form is OncoSec’s ImmunoPulse, which delivers brief electrical pulses of DNA IL-12 and has shown in early studies to date to penetrate and destroy cancer cells.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute and the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology have developed a more effective method to determine how T cells differentiate into specialized cell types.

• share
• favorite_border

A study published today in Science reports provides a detailed analysis of the microbes that live in houses and apartments.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists at Washington University in St. Louis have obtained the first experimental evidence that there are at least two fail-safe points in the bacterial cell cycle. If the fail-safes are activated, the cell is forced to exit the cell cycle forever. It then enters a zombie-like state and is unable to reproduce even under the most favorable of conditions. Drugs that trigger the fail-safes are already under development.

• share
• favorite_border

A 30-year-old unvaccinated male security forces student is the first reported case of spreading the smallpox vaccine virus (vaccinia) across his face by shaving after he had inadvertently acquired the virus during combative training at the largest U.S. Air Force training installation, according to a recently released health surveillance report.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center have identified the immune cells responsible for destroying hair follicles in people with alopecia areata, a common autoimmune disease that causes hair loss, and have tested an FDA-approved drug that eliminated these immune cells and restored hair growth in a small number of patients. The results appear in today’s online issue of Nature Medicine.

• share
• favorite_border

Advances in the prevention and treatment of an often fatal condition called bacterial meningitis appear to be paying dividends in the United States, report infectious disease experts at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) in the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

• share
• favorite_border

Sharpened pencils: check; notebooks and paper: check; school schedule: check. As a parent, this check list may seem familiar to you. It is a clear indication that back-to-school season is here and that means preparing your child for the school year as best as you can. Children’s Hospital Los Angeles is helping you and your child finalize the list by providing top 10 expert tips on keeping your child healthy and safe all year round.

• share
• favorite_border

The immune system ages and weakens with time, making the elderly prone to life-threatening infection and other maladies, and a UC San Francisco research team now has discovered a reason why.

• share
• favorite_border

For the millions of adults and children in the U.S. who have to shun nuts to avoid an allergic reaction, help could be on the way. Scientists are now developing a way to process cashews — and potentially other nuts — that could make them safer for people who are allergic to them. They’re presenting their work at the 248th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society.

• share
• favorite_border

A recently published study looks at the discovery of porcine enterovirus G, which is an important find in the United States.

• share
• favorite_border

Though kids often stay on track with receiving vaccines due to school requirements, with no system in place, adult rates remain low, according to one UAB expert.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Norris Cotton Cancer Center are exploring ways to wake up the immune system so it recognizes and attacks invading cancer cells. One pioneering approach uses nanoparticles to jumpstart the body’s ability to fight tumors

• share
• favorite_border

Chemclin’s Anti-TB assay provides components for in-vitro qualitative determination of Antibody to Mycobacterium Tuberculosis (Anti-TB) in human serum or plasma by an indirect chemiluminescent assay method.

• share
• favorite_border

Chemclin’s Anti-TP assay provides components for in-vitro qualitative determination of Antibody to Treponema Pallidum (Anti-TP) in human serum or plasma by a double - antigen sandwich chemiluminescent assay method.

• share
• favorite_border

Chemclin’s HIV kits are available for in-vitro qualitative determination of Antibody to Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 and Type 2 (Anti-HIV 1+2) and P24 antigen of HIV in human serum or plasma by a sandwich chemiluminescent assay method.

• share
• favorite_border

Applied and effortless simplicity of Burkert products have always been something to rely on – now we have added pure flexibility to the list of standards you can expect. The unique Pneumatic Dosing unit from Burkert – ultra precision and repeatability of fluid dosing come together with a flexible, customizable design giving you precisely the results that matter to you. Whether your world is dosing pharma media or syrup, vaccines or coffee flavors, wide ranging performance just met your changing needs.

• share
• favorite_border

The human monoclonal antibody known as m102.4, which has proven effective in protecting against the frequently fatal Hendra virus, has now been shown in studies to protect against the closely related Nipah virus -- the basis of the 2011 movie "Contagion" -- a highly infectious and deadly agent that results in acute respiratory distress syndrome and encephalitis, person-to-person transmission, and greater than 90 percent case fatality rates among humans. The results of the study, conducted by a team of Federal and university scientists, will appear in Science Translational Medicine online: “Therapeutic Treatment of Nipah Virus Infection in Nonhuman Primates with a Neutralizing Human Monoclonal Antibody." The full study will be available following the release of the embargo at 2 p.m. June 25, 2014.

• share
• favorite_border

An international team of scientists, led by researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, have identified the genes encoding a molecule that famously defines Group A Streptococcus (strep), a pathogenic bacterial species responsible for more than 700 million infections worldwide each year.

• share
• favorite_border

An international team of researchers has shown that circulating avian influenza viruses contain all the genetic ingredients necessary to underpin the emergence of a virus similar to the deadly 1918 influenza virus.

• share
• favorite_border

Experimenting with mice, infectious disease experts at NYU Langone Medical Center have found that immune system cells uninfected with the bacterium that causes tuberculosis trigger immune system T cells to fight the disease. The findings upend the long-held scientific belief that only cells, known specifically as dendritic cells, infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis could stimulate a broader, defensive immune system attack of the invading microorganism.