Written by Alex Brewer, PharmD, MBA | Reviewed by Amy B. Gragnolati, PharmD, BCPS Published on January 5, 2022 Key takeaways: A weakened immune system can make it harder to fight infections. Some medications can weaken your immune system. These are generally called immunosuppressants, and they can treat many health conditions. Most vaccines are safe...
Diana Kwon The brain’s immune system includes a network of transport vessels (blue) and its own immune cells made in the bone marrow (green). Credit: Siling Du, Kipnis lab, Washington University in St. Louis The brain is the body’s sovereign, and receives protection in keeping with its high status. Its cells are long-lived and shelter...
by Elsevier Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Primary immunodeficiency disorders (PID) can result in chronic and sometimes life-threatening infections. More than 450 PIDs have been described, but timely and accurate diagnoses remain a challenge. In a new study in The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics, investigators used next-generation sequencing technology to test a DNA panel of 130 different...
by Katherine Unger Baillie, University of Pennsylvania Credit: University of Pennsylvania Checkpoint inhibitors have become important tools in the cancer-fighting arsenal. By blocking proteins that normally restrain the immune response, these drugs can help the immune system destroy cancer cells. But they don’t work in all patients. And now a new study in Nature Immunology led by...
by The Ottawa Hospital A Natural Killer cell (arrow) turns green after stealing a chunk of a green cancer cell. Cancer cells hijack this process to put Natural Killer cells to sleep and evade the immune system. Credit: Hasim et al., Sci. Adv. 8, eabj3286 (2022) Researchers at the Ottawa Hospital and the University of Ottawa...
by University of Helsinki Non-LGLL T cell populations are more mature, clonal, and cytotoxic in T-LGLL compared with T cells of healthy controls and patients with other cancers. a UMAP representations of non-leukemic CD45+ sorted cells from 11 T-LGLL, 6 healthy, 4 CML, 4 CLL, 2 RCC, and 1 NSCLC samples profiled from peripheral blood with...
TEL-AVIV UNIVERSITY IMAGE: PROF. DAN PEER CREDIT: TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY Researchers from Tel Aviv University proved that a drug delivery system based on lipid nanoparticles can utilize RNA to overcome resistance to both chemotherapy and immunotherapy in cancer treatments. The study opens a new path to a personalized and precisely targeted battle against cancer. The...
When mice with atopic dermatitis – a common type of allergic skin inflammation – are treated with drugs that target the immune system, their thickened, itchy skin generally heals quickly. But scientists have now discovered that the same treatment in obese mice makes their skin worse instead. That is because obesity changes the molecular underpinnings of allergic...
by New York Genome Center Credit: Mat Legut/Jahan Rahman The first FDA-approved gene therapies are living drugs: immune cells taken from cancer patients engineered to target tumor cells. However, for many patients, these advanced therapies do not result in a long-lasting remission. Now, scientists at the New York Genome Center and New York University have...
by Lindsay Brownell, Harvard University This illustration demonstrates the structure of the LF Chip: B cells and T cells were cultured together in the extracellular matrix (ECM)-lined lower channel, and were “fed” via the consistent flow of nutrient-containing medium through the upper channel. This flow is also what appears to have caused the spontaneous assembly...
