A leading cause of glaucoma and blindness is exfoliation syndrome, or XFS, an age-related disorder that results in excess fibrous material building up. Now, A*STAR scientists, along with an international research team, have found a novel mutation on the LOXL1 gene that appears to protect against XFS and glaucoma, alongside five new locations on a...
Category: <span>Immunology</span>
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Steering the Immune Defense Against Fungal Pathogens
Fungal infections represent an increasing health crisis, especially for immune-deficient patients. American scientists now report in the journal Angewandte Chemie that specific help could be provided by small-molecule immunotherapeutics with novel mechanism of action. They developed small bifunctional molecules that simultaneously bind both chitin, a specific feature of the fungal cell wall and a molecule not found...
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Locking Down the Big Bang of Immune Cells
Forgotten strands of DNA initiate the development of immune cells Schematic diagram showing how a subset of immune cells, named DN2a T cells, mature into DN2b T cells. The maturation of this step is among the earliest in immune cell development and is controlled by the forgotten DNA strands that allow the genome to...
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Gene immunotherapy protects against multiple sclerosis in mice
This visual abstract depicts the work of Keeler et al., who developed a gene immunotherapy for multiple sclerosis in mice. A potent and long-lasting gene immunotherapy approach prevents and reverses symptoms of multiple sclerosis in mice, according to a study published September 21st in the journal Molecular Therapy. Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune disease in...
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Immune cells may heal bleeding brain after strokes
While immune cells called neutrophils are known to act as infantry in the body’s war on germs, a National Institutes of Health-funded study suggests they can act as medics as well. By studying rodents, researchers showed that instead of attacking germs, some neutrophils may help heal the brain after an intracerebral hemorrhage, a form of...
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Cargo-Sorting DNA Robots
Autonomous molecules that collect, carry, and sort different genetic packages usher in a new era for nucleic-acid robotics. Walking across a precisely folded DNA landscape, a teeny tiny robot picks up a molecular payload, drops it off at a defined delivery address, then heads off to retrieve and sort more molecules. This is not the...
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When good immune cells turn bad
Investigators at the Children’s Center for Cancer and Blood Diseases at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles have identified new findings about an immune cell – called a tumor-associated macrophage – that promotes cancer instead of fighting it. They have identified the molecular pathway, known as STAT3, as the mechanism the immune cell uses to foster neuroblastoma,...
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Unique gene therapy prevents, reverses multiple sclerosis in animal model
Multiple sclerosis affects about 2.3 million people worldwide and is the most common neurological disease in young adults. Multiple sclerosis can be inhibited or reversed in mouse models using a novel gene therapy technique to suppress the immune response that induces the disease, University of Florida Health researchers have found. By combining the transfer of...
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The Easiest Place to Use CRISPR Might Be in Your Ear
Scientists are hopeful they can inject the gene-editing technology directly into the ear to stop hereditary deafness. We all know that CRISPR is the next big thing in gene-editing treatments. But how do you get the versatile genetic scissors into a person’s body? The usual way might be to load the gene-editing instructions into billions of viruses...
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Usher syndrome: Gene therapy restores hearing and balance
Hearing loss, sometimes associated with other disorders such as balance defects, is the most common sensory deficit, affecting more than 280 million people worldwide, according to WHO. In France, one child in 700 is born with severe or profound hearing loss, and one in every 1,000 will lose their sense of hearing before adulthood. Over...