Credit: Michigan State University Michigan State University scientists are testing a promising drug that may stop a gene associated with obesity from triggering breast and lung cancer, as well as prevent these cancers from growing. These findings are based on two studies featured in the latest issue of Cancer Prevention Research. The first was a...
Tag: <span>Immune cells</span>
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Researchers target immune cells to slow progression of ALS
IMAGE: This is Dr. Fiona McKay from the Westmead Institute for Medical Research. view more Credit: Westmead Institute for Medical Research New research into Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) – also known as motor neuron disease – shows that specific immune cells may help slow progression of the disease, an important step towards developing new therapies to...
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Scientists discover treatment target for sepsis
In a study published in Nature Communications, Northwestern Medicine scientists demonstrated the key role a molecule called oxPAPC plays in regulating the inflammatory response—findings which could inform the development of new therapies for the body’s life-threatening response to serious infections. Lan Chu, a sixth-year doctoral student in Feinberg’s Driskill Graduate Program in Life Sciences (DGP),...
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Cancers Relapse by Feeding Off Immune Signals
In mice, the tumor cells are able to thwart the immune response that would kill them—but immunotherapy prevented the return of melanoma. After a seemingly successful cancer treatment, a few hearty cancer cells can remain in patients’ bodies, a dangerous persistence known as minimal residual disease (MRD). A new study, published today (October 16) in Cancer...
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Penn Study Shows How Female Immune Cells Keep Their Second X Chromosome Shut Off
Autoimmune diseases tend to strike women more than men and having multiple X chromosomes could be the main reason why. While a process called X chromosome inactivation serves to balance out gene dosage between males and females, some genes on the “inactive X” chromosome in immune cells can sometimes escape this process, giving women an...
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Novel immune cells control neurons responsible for fat breakdown
The biological causes underlying obesity have been under intense scrutiny, with studies suggesting a link between the nervous and the immune systems. Now, in a breakthrough study to be published in Nature Medicineon 9 October, a research team led by Ana Domingos, from Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC; Portugal), discovered an unforeseen population of immune cells...
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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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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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New insight into how immune cells are formed
In contrast to what has been previously believed, development of blood stem cells to mast cells, a type of specialised immune cell, does not depend on a growth factor called stem cell factor. This has been demonstrated in a new collaborative study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Uppsala University, and published in the scientific...
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Researchers show how a protein prevents the uncontrolled expansion of immune cells
The mammalian immune system consists of millions of individual cells that are produced daily from precursor cells in the bone marrow. During their development, immune cells undergo a rapid expansion, which is interrupted by phases of differentiation to more mature lymphocytes. Alternate phases of proliferation and differentiation occur also during the maturation of antibody-producing B...