Scientists at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) have discovered a potential new way to better fight a range of infectious diseases, cancers and even autoimmune diseases. The new study, published recently in Nature Immunology, shows how a protein works as a “master regulator” in the immune system.
In a new Science Immunology study, published on June 12, 2020, scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) offer a clue to why non-allergic people don’t have a strong reaction to house dust mites. They’ve uncovered a previously unknown subset of T cells that may control allergic immune reactions and asthma from ever developing in response to house dust mites—and other possible allergens.
In a new study, published June 5, 2020, in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) shows that antibodies against JEV are “cross-reactive” and can also recognize Zika virus. Unfortunately, these antibodies can actually make Zika cases more severe.
Seventeen years ago, another viral outbreak was in the news. People wore masks, many were nervous to fly. This outbreak, known as SARS, was caused by a type of coronavirus we now call SARS-CoV-1. The difference was that SARS-CoV-1 was controlled and the virus is all but extinct. The newspaper headlines became a distant memory.
A study by researchers at La Jolla Institute for Immunology documents a robust antiviral immune response to SARS-CoV-2 in a group of 20 adults who had recovered from COVID-19. The findings show that the body’s immune system is able to recognize SARS-CoV-2 in many ways, dispelling fears that the virus may elude ongoing efforts to create an effective vaccine.
A new study co-led by scientists at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) adds increasing evidence that Parkinson’s disease is partly an autoimmune disease. In fact, the researchers report that signs of autoimmunity can appear in Parkinson’s disease patients years before their official diagnosis.
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.
La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) has been awarded a $1.73 million grant by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to establish a Coronavirus Immunotherapy Consortium (CoVIC) as part of the foundation’s global efforts to stem the tide of the current coronavirus outbreak.
Publishing in the March 16, 2020, online issue of Host, Cell and Microbe, a team of researchers at La Jolla Institute for Immunology, in collaboration with researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute, provides the first analysis of potential targets for effective immune responses against the novel coronavirus. The researchers used existing data from known coronaviruses to predict which parts of SARS-CoV-2 are capable of activating the human immune system.
No one knows what makes a mild dengue viral infection morph into a severe and sometimes deadly dengue hemorrhagic fever/dengue shock syndrome. Experts previously believed the likely cause was ramped up activity of T cells, which can massively boost an immune response to a virus. Now, however, researchers at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI), have found definitive evidence that CD4 T cells, one of two main subtypes of T cells, are not to blame.
La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) is placing their confidence in Berkeley Lights’ Beacon® Optofluidic Platform and B cell antibody discovery workflow to accelerate the discovery of rare and lifesaving antibodies for the treatment of re-emerging and emerging diseases.
New work from the lab of La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) investigator Anjana Rao, Ph.D., reveals a previously unrecognized activity for a highly conserved DNA repair factor. The study reports that mouse lymphocytes engineered to lack that protein (known as HMCES and pronounced Hem'-sez) cannot recombine their DNA in a manner necessary to make new classes of antibodies, called Immunoglobulins G or A (IgG or IgA).
Seqster, the award-winning SaaS-based technology platform enabling consumer-centered health data management, today announced a 3-year licensing deal and partnership with La Jolla Institute of Immunology (LJI) to support the execution of a $6.9 million Asthma study funded by the National Institutes of Health/National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NIH NHLBI) that establishes one of only 10 PrecISE Network Clinical Centers nationwide.
A new study, led by researchers at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI), identified and then reverse engineered the molecular properties shared by antibodies that are particularly efficient at inactivating or “neutralizing” Lassa virus providing a map for rational vaccine design.
In their latest study, published in this week’s online issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI), reveal how the finely tuned balance between DNA methylation and demethylation prevents genomic instability and cancer.
In a new study, published on June 25, 2019, in the journal eLife, the researchers report that higher levels of doublets can be found in people with severe cases of tuberculosis or dengue fever.
Tissue-resident memory T cells (TRMs) are known to help the body fight infection, but they are also key tumor fighters. A new study reveals that these cells are unique in their ability to seek out and kill tumor cells without suffering from the common phenomenon of T cell “exhaustion.”
Eric Zwisler, former President and Chairman of Cardinal Health China, has been elected Chairman of the Board of Directors of La Jolla Institute for Immunology. He will assume his role effective May 31, 2019.
La Jolla Institute Professor Erica Ollmann Saphire, Ph.D., will lead a five-year global effort totaling up to $35 million that brings together experts from around the world to streamline and accelerate the development of immunotherapeutics against emerging and re-emerging viral threats. The international consortium is funded through the Centers of Excellence for Translational Research (CETR) program at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
A decade ago researchers announced development of a cancer immunotherapy called CAR (for chimeric antigen receptor)-T, in which a patient is re-infused with their own genetically modified T cells equipped to mount a potent anti-tumor attack.
”There's a lot of merit in bringing medicines to people who can't reach them themselves, but it's sort of putting a bandaid on the situation and I realized that only through scientific discovery will we really make huge changes that impact large populations of people. So that's why I started doing research and global health, specifically dengue virus and Zika virus.” —Dr. Melanie McCauley
in 47 years operating the Balboa Park Carousel in San Diego, Bill Brown has only missed two weeks of work. For him, Life Without Disease means that he never has to miss another day.
Page and Larry have been exploring the world together since their days as high school sweethearts. For them, Life Without Disease means they can keep going wherever adventure leads them.
A new HIV vaccine delivery strategy appears to enhance the protective immune response in a preclinical model. Scientists at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) have discovered that delivering an HIV vaccine in small doses over a series of days leads to a stronger immune response than when the same vaccine is given all at once.
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.
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.
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.
Each year, some 600 million people around the world come down with strep throat. Yet, it was unclear why some kids are prone to repeated bouts of strep throat while others appear to be more or less immune. The latest study by researchers at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) provides the first clues why some children are more susceptible than others to contracting recurrent strep throat.
La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) has been awarded a $22 million contract renewal over seven years from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to host and expand the Immune Epitope Database (IEDB). The database is the world’s most comprehensive collection of scientific data on how the immune system responds to a wide range of infectious agents, allergy-causing substances, and other stimuli that activate the immune system.
La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) and Kyowa Kirin Pharmaceutical Research, Inc. (KKR), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Kyowa Hakko Kirin Co., Ltd. (KHK), a global specialty pharmaceutical company, today announced the signing of a new agreement. The agreement extends the longest industry-academic collaboration in the world for another three-year term, through until the end of 2021.
Dr. Matthias von Herrath, M.D., who founded the Type 1 Diabetes Center at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) has been identified as the world’s top expert in Type 1 Diabetes by Expertscape, an organization that provides tools to quickly and easily find the best clinicians or pioneering scientists specializing in a wide range of medical conditions or biomedical topics.
For more than four years, a team of LJI scientists led by Associate Professor Pandurangan Vijayanand, M.D., Ph.D., has been undertaking a massive immunoprofiling effort, detailing how variations in DNA sequence impact gene activity in different types of immune cells.
In this study, La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) investigator Sujan Shresta, Ph.D., who studies both dengue and Zika viruses, explored awhether maternal immunity to Zika virus, which is structurally and genetically similar to dengue, might trigger a severe response to dengue infection in offspring.
The latest study by researchers at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) and their collaborators provide the first in-depth characterization of the body’s cytotoxic T cell response to Zika, which plays an important role in providing protective immunity against Zika.
Two studies recently published by La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) investigators Patrick Hogan, PhD, and Aparna Gudlur, PhD, report how a calcium-sensing protein called STIM1 signals that it's time to initiate calcium retrieval and then relays that message to its partner, the calcium channel ORAI.
Researchers at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) and UC San Diego have been awarded $ 4.5 million as part of the National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Moonshot initiative. The funding will support research to develop new and improved immunotherapeutic treatment options for patients with head and neck cancer.
Neutrophils—short-lived, highly mobile and versatile—outnumber all other immune cells circulating through the blood stream. Now, researchers at La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology identified a progenitor of neutrophils in the bone marrow of mice and humans and tied it to cancer-promoting activities.
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.
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.
Dr. Kimishige Ishizaka, discoverer of a novel class of antibodies and the first Scientific Director of the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology (LJI), has died on July 6 in Yamagata City, Japan. He was 92 years old.
Allergic asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease of the lung and airways driven, at least in part, by, a subgroup of overly active T helper cells. Thus, to devise better treatments, it is essential to determine how this cell population, known as TH2 cells, develops, matures and then crosses the line between protection and tissue damage.
A new paper published in Circulation by researchers at La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology reports successful vaccination of atherosclerotic mice with a small chunk of protein snipped out of "bad cholesterol." Vaccination reduced plaque levels in test mice, and other experiments with human blood samples identified the class of T cells likely responsible for positive outcomes. The paper suggests that a comparable strategy could form the basis of a human vaccine.
A team led by LJI researchers reveals that bystander cell accumulation antagonizes rather than abets cell-killing by specific CTLs, curbing inflammation. This is noteworthy because that chief anti-inflammatory role has been traditionally ascribed to what are called regulatory T cells, or "Tregs", which dampen autoimmune responses. T
New research from scientists at the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology shows how a diet high in fat and cholesterol depletes the ranks of artery-protecting immune cells, turning them into promoters of inflammation, which exacerbate atherosclerotic plaque buildup that occurs in cardiovascular disease. The team has also found that high density lipoproteins (HDL)—more commonly known as “good cholesterol”—counteract this process, helping the protective immune cells maintain their identity and keep arteries clear.
Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease driven by the interplay of genetics, environmental factors and a diverse cast of immune cells. In their latest study, researchers at La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology (LJI) identified a subset of T cells, whose frequency serves as early childhood immune signature that predicts the risk of developing asthma later on.
LJI researchers report mechanisms used by a subgroup of ILCs, known as ILC2 cells, to undergo maturation required for them to mount an effective immune response. These discoveries suggest a novel approach to treat inflammatory disease caused by overactive ILC2s.
La Jolla Institute Professor Dr. Alessandro Sette has been awarded a $340,000 grant by The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF) to follow up on an earlier MJFF-supported study, which provided the strongest evidence to date that autoimmunity plays a role in Parkinson’s disease.
La Jolla Institute scientists provide new insights into how so-called CD4 cytotoxic T cells arise in humans and thus could facilitate improved vaccine design.
La Jolla Institute scientists demonstrate that LIGHT, a member of the tumor necrosis factor (TNF) super family, directly controls the hyperproliferation of keratinocytes as well as the expression of periostin, a protein that contributes to the clinical features of atopic dermatitis as well as other inflammatory skin diseases such as scleroderma.
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