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Diversity is good, especially when it comes to antibodies. It’s long been known that a gene assembly process called V(D)J recombination allows our immune system to mix and match bits of genetic code, generating new antibodies to conquer newly encountered threats. But how these gene segments come together to be spliced has been a mystery. […]
A study conducted at the University of Eastern Finland demonstrated that a recently described T-cell subset, so-called peripheral T helper cells, may have a role in the development of type 1 diabetes. The frequency of circulating peripheral T helper cells was observed to be increased both in children with recently diagnosed type 1 diabetes and […]
A team from the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS) has made a scientific breakthrough regarding the virulence strategy employed by the Leishmania parasite to infect cells of the immune system. This microorganism is responsible for Leishmaniasis, a chronic parasitic disease that affects more than 12 million people worldwide. The Leishmania parasite was already […]
New data suggest that people who have a parent, sibling, or child with blood cancer have a higher likelihood of being diagnosed with the disease. The study published online today in Blood offers the first evidence that such familial risks exist across the spectrum of hematologic malignancies. Age of diagnosis, whether the relative is a […]
Two known gene mutations induce pathways that enhance pancreatic cancer’s ability to invade tissues and evade the immune system. Researchers report the molecular details of this process providing insights into druggable targets for immunotherapies. Mutations in the genes KRAS and TP53 are closely linked to pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, by far the most common type of […]
BRCA — the family of DNA-repair proteins associated with breast, ovarian prostate, and pancreatic cancers — interacts with a multipart, molecular complex that is also responsible for regulating the immune system. When certain players in this pathway go awry, autoimmune disorders, like lupus, can arise. Now, researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the […]
Scientists have identified a new internal regulator that helps control the body’s response to fight infection. The discovery could be a target for new drugs to tackle autoimmune diseases, such as lupus and scleroderma, where healthy tissues are attacked by the body’s own immune system. “We want to put a brake on the body’s own […]
Scientists from The University of Queensland’s Diamantina Institute have revealed the difference between a stem cell and other blood vessel cells using gene-sequencing technology. Leading skin cancer and stem cell researcher Professor Kiarash Khosrotehrani said the findings provided evidence of how stem cells express genes that allow them to be identified within a blood vessel. […]
Cells in the body are wired like computer chips to direct signals that instruct how they function, research suggests. Unlike a fixed circuit board, however, cells can rapidly rewire their communication networks to change their behaviour. The discovery of this cell-wide web turns our understanding of how instructions spread around a cell on its head. […]
While therapies that harness the power of the immune system against cancer have made remarkable progress against certain types of tumors, they still remain ineffective in most cancer patients. A new study from the Center for Immunology and Inflammatory Diseases (CIID) at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) describes a method of reprogramming the regulatory T cells […]