There are only a handful of immunology majors offered at U.S. universities. A report last October by UAB researchers made the case for expanding these programs. Now faculty and students are seeing an explosion of interest.
Today, the Mount Sinai Laboratory (MSL), Center for Clinical Laboratories received emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for an antibody test that was developed, validated, and launched at Mount Sinai by a team of internationally renowned researchers and clinicians of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. This test detects the presence or absence of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and importantly, may also be used to identify positive specimens with an antibody titer (level) up to a dilution of 1:2880 for the identification of individuals with higher antibody titers.
While the current coronavirus pandemic continues to affect all people, families will still give birth and bring new life into the world. During the COVID-19 crisis, breastfeeding and the provision of human milk to infants is recommended by national and international organizations because it is effective against infectious diseases: It strengthens the immune system by directly transferring antibodies from the mother.
Researchers identified the mechanisms underlying the innate immune function of the enzyme caspase-6, offering ways to combat viral infection, inflammatory diseases and cancer.
In a new article published in the journal Immunity, Moffitt Cancer Center researchers reveas how protein-signaling pathways associated with cellular stress processes turn myeloid cells into tumor-promoting players. They also suggest that targeting the PERK protein may be an effective therapeutic approach to reactivate the immune system and boost the effectiveness of immunotherapy.
Cells in some of the body’s most vulnerable entry routes to bacterial infection buffer themselves when the immune system detects danger by reorganizing the cholesterol on their surfaces, a new study led by UTSW scientists suggests.
Research findings suggest gut microbes can effect allergic immune responses. Tasuku Ogita who has recently joined Shinshu University is an expert on teas and their effects on gut bacteria.
Researchers at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) have written a new first draft chapter in the book of immunology. They have discovered a protective biological switch that, briefly, turns on the immune response at the first whiff of an invader—an important feature—but can also turn off potentially destructive immune rampage that may also occur. This “off” switch can protect against serious, life threatening inflammation.
As scientists race to develop and test new treatments for COVID-19, Dana-Farber’s Wayne Marasco, MD, PhD, and his lab team are bringing one of the world’s most formidable resources to the effort: a “library” of 27 billion human antibodies against viruses, bacteria, and other bodily invaders.The collection, created by Marasco and his associates in 1997 using blood samples from more than 57 Dana-Farber staff, has already had an illustrious history in the quest to tame viral disease outbreaks.
As scientists forge ahead to piece together a comprehensive profile of the new coronavirus fueling a historic pandemic, they are focusing their efforts on six areas: epidemiology, diagnostics, pathogenesis, clinical disease management, treatment and vaccines.
While it may be tempting to drink more while quarantined at home, a Loyola Medicine doctor is urging moderation, as too much alcohol can diminish the body’s ability to fight off infections like COVID-19.Majid Afshar, MD, a pulmonologist and critical care specialist and assistant professor at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, has studied the effects of alcohol on the body’s immune system, as well as its impact on breathing and lung health. He warns that excessive alcohol use (at least four or five drinks over a few hours) can alter our cytokine response, or signaling proteins, which regulate the body’s immune response.
Scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital mapped the epigenetic controls on T cells, which could aid Type 1 diabetes diagnosis and treatment, as well as cancer immunotherapy.
As the nation and world respond to the growing COVID-19 pandemic, a panel of leading aging research experts, convened by the American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR), posed that targeting the biology of aging through promising therapeutics could bolster the medical response to COVID-19 and other viruses that are devastating older patients.
Researchers at Harvard Medical School and at Brigham and Women’s Hospital are adapting an antibody-detection tool to study the aftermath of infections by the novel coronavirus that is causing the current global pandemic.
CEL-SCI’s immunotherapy candidate aims to treat patients at highest risk of dying from COVID-19. LEAPS immunotherapy has been used in collaboration with the National Institutes for Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) against another respiratory virus, H1N1, involved in the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic. Those successful studies demonstrated that LEAPS peptides, given after virus infection has occurred, reduced morbidity and mortality in mice infected with H1N1.
An expert team of researchers and clinicians have been working together to design, validate, and implement an “end-to-end” clinical pathology laboratory solution that will allow for the testing of approximately several hundred people per day in order to rapidly diagnose and help guide the selection of treatment and monitor disease course.
Initial studies with COVID-19 coronavirus aim to replicate prior successful preclinical experiments of LEAPS against H1N1pandemic flu in mice conducted with National Institutes for Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)