The human gut is loaded with commensal bacteria - "good" microbes that, among other functions, help the body digest food. The gastrointestinal tract contains literally trillions of such cells, and yet the immune system seemingly turns a blind eye. However, in several chronic human diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease, HIV/AIDS, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes, the immune system attacks these normally beneficial bacteria, resulting in chronic inflammation and contributing to disease progression.
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Dr. Laurie H. Glimcher, the Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Dean of Weill Cornell Medical College and provost for medical affairs of Cornell University, is the winner of a prestigious award from a group of female scientists from The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research dedicated to celebrating outstanding women in science and medicine.
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While Huntington's disease (HD) is currently incurable, the HD research community anticipates that new disease-modifying therapies in development may slow or minimize disease progression. The success of HD research depends upon the identification of reliable and sensitive biomarkers to track disease and evaluate therapies, and these biomarkers may eventually be used as outcome measures in clinical trials. Biomarkers could be especially helpful to monitor changes during the time prior to diagnosis and appearance of overt symptomatology.
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Animals, insects, and plants use a variety of sensing mechanisms to detect invading pathogens such as viruses. One complex and effective antiviral defense system they share is based on recognition of double-stranded RNA, often produced when a virus invades a host cell.
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Galapagos NV and AbbVie announced today an extension of their GLPG0634 clinical development collaboration to include Crohn's disease. Galapagos will fund and complete a Phase 2 program in Crohn's disease, which is designed to facilitate rapid progression into Phase 3.
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Cytokines are molecules produced by immune cells that induce the migration of other cells to sites of infection or injury, promote the production of anti-microbial agents, and signal the production of inflammatory mediators.
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Idera Pharmaceuticals today announced presentation of data from its randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled Phase 2 trial that showed improvements from baseline of up to 90% in Psoriasis Area Severity Index scores in patients with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis following four weeks of treatment with the Toll-like Receptor antagonist IMO-3100.
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Isis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. announced the initiation of a Phase 1b/2a clinical study of ISIS-STAT3Rx in patients with advanced metastatic hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).
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Scientists have identified an influential link in a chain of events that leads to autoimmune inflammation of the central nervous system in a mouse model of multiple sclerosis.
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Patients with community-acquired pneumonia on a background of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease have a different early inflammatory pattern than patients with CAP only, a prospective study shows.
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Patients with community-acquired pneumonia on a background of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease have a different early inflammatory pattern than patients with CAP only, a prospective study shows.
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Opsona Therapeutics Limited, the innate immune drug development company, today announced that it has raised €33 million (US $ 43 million) in an oversubscribed Series C financing.
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Transgene SA, a biopharmaceutical company that develops targeted immunotherapy products to treat major unmet medical needs in cancer and chronic infectious diseases, announced pre-clinical data obtained with its novel immunotherapeutic, TG1050, to treat chronic hepatitis B infection.
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Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, have shown in a mouse model that infection with nematodes (also known as roundworms) can not only combat obesity but ameliorate related metabolic disorders.
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Snot. It's not something most of us spend a lot of time thinking about, but, for a team of researchers in Washington, D.C., it's front and center.
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Numerous epidemiologic studies have shown that a diet high in salt is associated with an increased risk of gastric cancer.
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Dry eye disease (DED) is a common condition that causes discomfort, visual disturbance and potentially damaging ocular surface inflammation that greatly impacts a person's quality of life.
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KYTHERA Biopharmaceuticals, Inc. today presented positive results that found MRI measurements of patients treated with ATX-101 demonstrated a statistically significant reduction in submental fat, commonly known as double chin, during an oral session at The Aesthetic Meeting 2013, organized by the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, April 11-16, New York, NY.
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A potential new strategy to developing new drugs to control inflammation without serious side effects has been found by Georgia State University researchers and international colleagues.
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UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers report that a pathogen annually blamed for an estimated 90 million cases of food-borne illness defeats a host's immune response by using a fat-snipping enzyme to cut off cellular communication.
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