Thymus News and Research

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Researchers generate artificial thymus tissue to enable T cell maturation

The thymus plays a key role in the body's immune response. It is here where the T lymphocytes or T cells, a major type of immune defence cells, mature. Different types of T cells, designated to perform specific tasks, arise from progenitor cells that migrate to the thymus from the bone marrow. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Immunology and Epigenetics in Freiburg have generated artificial thymus tissue in a mouse embryo to enable the maturation of immune cells.

30 Mar 2012

Issues and treatments of chronic skin wounds

The skin is the body's largest organ and an indispensable part of the immune system. As the body's outermost line of defense against microbes, the skin provides important protection against potentially toxic environmental elements. One subset of immune cells, thymus-derived T-cells play an important role in the skin's response to injury, particularly with respect to wound healing.

21 Mar 2012

Third International Symposium on Thymosins in Health and Disease to take place on GW campus

The George Washington University is host to the world's leaders in the area of research that focuses on Thymosins- small proteins present in many animal tissues that have diverse biological activities- Two in particular, thymosins α1 and β4, have potentially important uses in medicine, and research has already progressed from the laboratory to the clinic.

16 Mar 2012

CUMC scientists develop a way to recreate personalized immune mouse

Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) scientists have developed a way to recreate an individual's immune system in a mouse. The "personalized immune mouse" offers researchers an unprecedented tool for individualized analysis of abnormalities that contribute to type 1 diabetes and other autoimmune diseases, starting at the onset of disease.

15 Mar 2012

T-cells can develop in human tonsils

A new study provides evidence that a critical type of immune cell can develop in human tonsils. The cells, called T lymphocytes, or T cells, have been thought to develop only in the thymus, an organ of the immune system that sits on the heart.

6 Mar 2012

Scientists observe maturation of immune cells in live zebrafish embryos

T-cells are the immune system's security force. They seek out pathogens and rogue cells in the body and put them out of action. Their precursors are formed in the bone marrow and migrate from there into the thymus. Here, they mature and differentiate to perform a variety of tasks. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg have now succeeded for the first time in observing the maturation of immune cells in live zebrafish embryos.

17 Feb 2012

Epigenetic mechanisms maintain tolerance in T cells specific for self antigens

At the most basic level, the immune system must distinguish self from non-self, that is, it must discriminate between the molecular signatures of invading pathogens (non-self antigens) and cellular constituents that usually pose no risk to health (self-antigens).

14 Feb 2012

Amyloid precursor protein fragment may be a biomarker for autism

Immune system abnormalities that mimic those seen with autism spectrum disorders have been linked to the amyloid precursor protein (APP), reports a research team from the University of South Florida's Department of Psychiatry and the Silver Child Development Center.

4 Jan 2012

Blood stem cells engineered to create cancer-killing T-cells

Researchers from UCLA's cancer and stem cell centers have demonstrated for the first time that blood stem cells can be engineered to create cancer-killing T-cells that seek out and attack a human melanoma. The researchers believe this approach could be useful in 40 percent of Caucasians with this malignancy.

29 Nov 2011

Scientists discover mechanism that helps explain why stress causes DNA damage

For years, researchers have published papers that associate chronic stress with chromosomal damage. Now researchers at Duke University Medical Center have discovered a mechanism that helps to explain the stress response in terms of DNA damage.

22 Aug 2011

Researchers clarify role of two proteins key to T-cell development

In the latest issue of Nature, researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania clarify the role of two proteins key to T-cell development.

9 Aug 2011

Nanoviricides lead anti-HIV candidate as good as HAART cocktail therapy

NanoViricides, Inc. reports that its lead anti-HIV candidate achieved anti-HIV efficacy equivalent to a HAART triple drug cocktail in its recently completed animal study.

25 Jul 2011

UNC receives $3M federal grant for AIDS research

Scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill schools of medicine and pharmacy have been awarded a $3 million federal grant to develop and test a new generation of treatments aimed at preventing sexual transmission of HIV to uninfected individuals.

19 Jul 2011

Humanized BLT mice help prevent HIV/AIDS transmission

The more than 2.7 million new HIV infections recorded per year leave little doubt that the HIV/AIDS epidemic continues to spread globally. That's why there's the need for safe, inexpensive and effective drugs to successfully block HIV transmission.

19 May 2011

Abcc10 might help counter resistance and extend effectiveness of anticancer drugs

Today's anticancer drugs often work wonders against malignancies, but sometimes tumors become resistant to the effects of such drugs, and treatment fails. Medical researchers would like to find ways of counteracting such resistance, but first they must understand why and how it happens.

17 May 2011

Study offers means of activating T cells to fight disease without antigenic triggers

For much of the time our T cells-the white blood cells that act as the police of the immune system-are in what immunologists call a "quiescent state," a sort of standby mode. For years, scientists have wondered if quiescence occurred by default or whether T cells need to work at remaining silent.

6 May 2011

Attacks by specific type of immune cells cause inflammations of heart muscle

Scientists of the German Cancer Research Center, jointly with colleagues in the United States, have found out that inflammations of the heart muscle are caused by attacks of a specific type of immune cells. These immune cells attack the body's own tissue because during their maturation they did not have the chance to develop tolerance against a protein that is only found in the heart muscle.

30 Mar 2011

Protein α-myosin could be a promising therapeutic target for myocarditis

Myocardits is an inflammation of the heart muscles that is a major cause of heart failure in young patients. In some cases, the disease is caused by viral infection, but in other patients it is linked to an autoimmune attack on the heart muscle. There are few effective treatment options for myocarditis, in part because the molecular mechanisms that underlie the defect are poorly defined.

24 Mar 2011

Scientists reveal protein target that can trigger myocarditis

People with type 1 diabetes, whose insulin-producing cells have been destroyed by the body's own immune system, are particularly vulnerable to a form of inflammatory heart disease caused by a different autoimmune reaction.

24 Mar 2011

Lampreys may have dual immune defense system similar to that of humans

Biologists have discovered that primitive, predatory lampreys have structures within their gills that play the same role as the thymus, the organ where immune cells called T cells develop in mammals, birds and fish.

4 Feb 2011