Antigen News and Research

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Diversity of HLA genotypes in humans is shaped to a significant degree by pathogens

The great physical diversity that evolution has forged in human beings is in evidence wherever we look, but the genes exhibiting the greatest diversity at the DNA level happen to function in a wholly invisible process: immunity. Genes encoding the Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) proteins are among the most diverse in the human genome, and scientists have proposed a number of hypotheses to explain why.

6 Jun 2005

Research shows how a virus uses the gene silencing machinery for its own infectious purposes

In the latest version of the hide-and-seek game between pathogens and the hosts they infect, researchers have found that a virus appears to cloak itself with a recently discovered gene silencing device to evade detection and destruction by immune cells.

3 Jun 2005

New vaccine against whooping cough is effective in teens and adults

The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) has announced that a study to be published in the June 22/29 issue found that a new vaccine against whooping cough is effective in teens and adults, carriers of the contagious respiratory disease so dangerous to infants.

3 Jun 2005

Leprosy microbes lead scientists to immune discovery

With the unusual opportunity that human leprosy infections provide for study of human immune responses, scientists have discovered how the body's early warning system prompts a rapid immune response by two separate armies of defensive cells.

29 May 2005

Is winter flu worse because of exercise-induced 'window of susceptibility'?

When you exercise or work outside in winter, that dry feeling at the back of your throat indicates the cold air has irritated your throat. Racehorses share a similar experience: exercising in below-freezing air causes mild airway injury.

26 May 2005

What is Sick Building Syndrome?

Science-based identification of mold and other causes of Sick Building Syndrome may improve its management, say plant pathologists with The American Phytopathological Society (APS).

26 May 2005

Obesity appears to increase the risk of prostate cancer

The obesity study examined the association between body mass index - weight to height ratio - and prostate cancer in 787 men undergoing biopsy due to an elevated tumor marker in the blood or an abnormal physical exam at a Veterans Affairs hospital in California between 1998 and 2002.

23 May 2005

Infants with Krabbe disease saved by cord blood stem cells

Children with a fatal genetic disorder called Krabbe Disease can be saved and their brain development preserved if they receive stem cells from umbilical cord blood before symptoms of the disease develop, according to a study published in the current issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

20 May 2005

New combination vaccine effective against plague

Plague, a bacterium that ravaged Europe in the Middle Ages and is today one of the most feared potential agents of bio-terrorism, may have met its match, according to Wake Forest University School of Medicine scientists.

18 May 2005

New blood tests for both prostate and colon cancer

Tessera Inc., a Seattle-based biomedical company is, in collaboration with Dr. Robert Getzenberg, Director of the Brady Urological Research Institute at Johns Hopkins University, developing blood tests for both prostate and colon cancer and expects to commence clinical trials on EPCA (Early Prostate Cancer Antigen), its first blood test for prostate cancer, before the end of this year.

18 May 2005

Zevalin safe and effective for non-Hogdkin's lymphoma patients

According to a University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) study, patients with advanced non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) previously treated with chemotherapy and adult stem cell transplantation can safely tolerate Zevalin (ibritumomab tiuxetan), a radiolabeled monoclonal antibody that targets radiation directly to a tumor.

17 May 2005

Tumor vasculature has become an attractive target in the treatment of cancer.

Treatment with a protein fused to an antibody in tumor-bearing mice led to coagulation of the blood within the tumor blood vessels, tumor tissue death, and tumor growth delay, according to a new study in the May 18 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

17 May 2005

Scientists have uncovered a new method the immune system uses to label foreign invaders as targets to be attacked

Researchers showed that the immune system can brand foreign proteins by chemically modifying their structure, and that these modifications increased the chances that cells known as lymphocytes would recognize the trespassers and attack them.

17 May 2005

Vitamin D, taxotere combination promising for advanced prostate cancer

Results of a new study strongly suggest that DN-101, a new high-dose calcitriol pill designed specifically as a cancer therapy, given in combination with docetaxel (Taxotere) extends the lives of men with advanced prostate cancer.

17 May 2005

Identifying high-risk prostate cancer means more prudent treatment decisions

While prostate cancer is a very common diagnosis, it is a deadly disease in relatively few men. One in 6 men will develop prostate cancer during his lifetime. However, of these, only one in 10 cases will be life-threatening.

16 May 2005

Intralesional immunotherapy for common warts is effective and safe

Injection of skin test antigens (preparations used in skin tests for immunity) into warts appears to stimulate the immune system and successfully treat the injected wart and also helps to treat distant non-injected warts, according to a study in the May issue of Archives of Dermatology.

16 May 2005

Insulin - possible vaccine against type 1 diabetes

It has taken scientists at the University of Miami's Diabetes Research Institute eight long years of painstaking research, but they believe they have finally pinned down Insulin, the hormone most closely linked to diabetes, to be the cause of the inherited form of the blood sugar disease.

11 May 2005

Discovery may pave way for immunotherapies for prostate cancer

Using a common chemotherapy agent, researchers at UCLA's Jonsson Cancer Center and the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine found a way to move an important biomarker expressed in prostate cancer, shaking it loose from one location in a cell – where it could not be accessed by blood – to another, easier to target area.

11 May 2005

Cytogen Corporation and Dowpharma collaborate to create a targeted oncology product designed to treat prostate and other cancers

Under the agreement, Dowpharma's proprietary MeO-DOTA bifunctional chelant technology will be used to radiolabel Cytogen's prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) antibody with a therapeutic radionuclide. PSMA is a protein highly expressed on the surface of prostate cancer cells and the neovasculature of many solid tumors.

10 May 2005

Vaccine developed at Rockefeller University boosts natural killer T cells in patients with cancer

A new vaccine designed at The Rockefeller University boosted a type of fast-responding immune system cell called the natural killer T (NKT) cell in patients with advanced cancer. The study surprised researchers by revealing the ability of these NKT cells to spur other, slower-responding immune cells to go to work.

4 May 2005