“Devastating” and “dismal.” That’s how leading researchers describe the present outlook for malignant brain tumors. The median survival rate for patients with glioblastoma multiforme, or GBM, is a mere 14.2 months. New research out of the University of Michigan supports combining two approaches to fight back against gliomas: attacking the tumor with gene therapy while...
Category: <span>Immunology</span>
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FDA To Speed Up Review Of Roche Tecentriq As Immunotherapy Treatment For Bladder Cancer
Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche has announced that U.S. health regulators have agreed to grant priority review to its Tecentriq immunotherapy treatment for a type of bladder cancer. In a statement, the drug company said that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has accepted its Biologics License Application, or BLA, and agreed to priority-review the treatment. Tecentriq Tecentriq (atezolizumab)...
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Cancers Evade Immunotherapy By ‘Discarding the Evidence’ of Tumor-Specific Mutations
Discovery could explain widespread acquired resistance among patients treated with immune checkpoint blockade drugs. T-cells attacking a cancer cell. Results of an initial study of tumors from patients with lung cancer or head and neck cancer suggest that the widespread acquired resistance to immunotherapy drugs known as checkpoint inhibitors may be due to the elimination...
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Autoimmunity and infections: When the body fights itself
Basel-based doctors are on the trail of a possible connection between autoimmune diseases and infections: errors can occur when immune cells absorb certain proteins from pathogen cells. These findings were reported in the journal PNAS by researchers from the Department of Biomedicine at the University of Basel and University Hospital Basel, as well as colleagues in the...
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Important element of immune defense against fungal infections discovered
Fungal infections are a serious health risk. They can be harmful especially to patients whose immune system is compromised through illness or chemotherapy. Scientists have discovered an important mechanism in the body’s defenses against fungi. The discovery explains, among other things, why people with certain genetic variations are more susceptible to fungal infections. To fight...
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Scientists discover the gene editing ‘off-switch’ that could protect against accidents or stop it from being used for harm
Researchers found proteins that are ‘potent inhibitors’ against Crispr-Cas9 Anti-Crispr proteins make procedure more precise to prevent an accident And, it would also provide a ‘fail safe’ if the technology falls in the wrong hands In recent years, the use of gene editing techniques has raised concern among both scientists and the public, with some...
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CAR-T Cell Therapy Effective Against Aggressive Brain Tumors, Say City Of Hope Researchers
A patient has been successful treated from recurrent multifocal glioblastoma through the means of CAR-T therapy. The method involves a specific kind of immunotherapy which targets cells where the IL13Rα2 antigen is present. The antigen is very common when it comes to brain cancer. Published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Dec. 29, the study...