A newly developed immunotherapy that simultaneously uses modified immune-fighting cells to home in on and attack two antigens, or foreign substances, on cancer cells was highly effective in mice implanted with human neuroblastoma tissue, report researchers from the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and the UNC School of Medicine. The…
Deficient immune cells implicated in TB disease progression
Nearly a quarter of the world’s population is estimated to be infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M.tb), the pathogen that causes tuberculosis, but less than 15 percent of infected individuals develop the disease. A study published May 24 in Nature Immunology by investigators from Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital,…
No, vaccine side effects don’t tell you how well your immune system will protect you from COVID-19
If someone gets a headache or feels a bit under the weather after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine, it’s become common to hear them say something like “Oh, it just means my immune system is really working hard.” On the flip side, when people don’t notice any side effects, they sometimes…
Delivering vaccines directly to the lungs can boost immune responses to respiratory infections or lung cancer: study
Many viruses infect their hosts through mucosal surfaces such as the lining of the respiratory tract. MIT researchers have now developed a vaccination strategy that can create an army of T cells that are ready and waiting at those surfaces, offering a quicker response to viral invaders. The researchers showed…
Immune receptor protein could hold key to treatment of autoimmune diseases
Autoimmune diseases are typically caused when the immune system, whose purpose is to deal with foreign threats to the body, incorrectly recognizes the body’s own proteins and cells as threats and activates immune cells to attack them. In the case of rheumatoid arthritis, a well-known autoimmune disease, immune cells erroneously…
Cancer research expands body’s own immune system to kill tumors
Scientists are hoping advances in cancer research could lead to a day when a patient’s own immune system could be used to fight and destroy a wide range of tumors. Cancer immunotherapy has some remarkable successes, but its effectiveness has been limited to a relatively small handful of cancers. In…
Study identifies noncoding RNA involved in immune response and sepsis
When the body’s immune response to an infection gets out of control, the result can be sepsis, a life-threatening condition in which an overwhelming inflammatory response can lead rapidly to failure of multiple organs and death. In a new study, researchers at UC Santa Cruz have identified a long noncoding…
Polysaccharides from red algae affect mice immune systems, say scientists
Carrageenans, biologically active polysaccharides isolated from red algae and widely used in the food industry as stabilizers, thickeners, or jelly agents, have an express effect on the immune systems of mice, according to a new study. The research was carried out by scientists from the School of Biomedicine of Far…
New study indicates Ebola vaccine safe and produces robust immune response
Scientists from the University of Oxford, working as part of the EBOVAC2 EBL2001 study group, have today announced the results of a phase 2 trial of a replication-deficient adenovirus vaccine aimed at providing protection against the lethal Ebola virus. Writing in the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases, they conclude that…
Fostamatinib in chronic immune thrombocytopenia: No comparison—added benefit not proven
Fostamatinib is approved for the treatment of chronic immune thrombocytopenia in adults who are refractory to other treatments (in particular to treatment with corticosteroids). The German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) examined in an early benefit assessment whether fostamatinib offers an added benefit for these patients…
Immune system may have another job—combatting depression
An inflammatory autoimmune response within the central nervous system similar to one linked to neurodegenerative diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS) has also been found in the spinal fluid of healthy people, according to a new Yale-led study comparing immune system cells in the spinal fluid of MS patients and…