Immunology News and Research

Latest Immunology News and Research

Paradigm shift in TB: virulence factors, not antibiotics

Over the course of the 20th Century, doctors waged war against infectious bacterial illness with the best new weapon they had: antibiotics.

27 Dec 2007

Researchers prevent muscle weakness caused by myasthenia gravis

Severe muscle weakness caused by myasthenia gravis - a highly debilitating autoimmune disorder - can be prevented or reversed by blocking a key step in the immune response that brings on the disease, researchers at the Saint Louis University School of Medicine have found.

20 Dec 2007

UT Southwestern secures $5 million grant for lupus research

The division of rheumatic diseases in the Department of Internal Medicine at UT Southwestern Medical Center has been awarded a five-year, $5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to fund the Center of Research Translation, which will investigate the autoimmune disease systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE).

20 Dec 2007

Researchers train the immune system to deliver virus that destroys cancer in lab models

An international team of researchers led by Mayo Clinic have designed a technique that uses the body's own cells and a virus to destroy cancer cells that spread from primary tumors to other parts of the body through the lymphatic system.

20 Dec 2007

Research provides new information about the body's immune system

Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University have uncovered new information about the body's immune system in a study that suggests new strategies may be in order for protecting the country's aging population against disease.

18 Dec 2007

Controlling lupus - new drug targets found

Investigators at Hospital for Special Surgery have identified two new targets for drugs aimed at controlling lupus.

17 Dec 2007

Genetic cause of Kawasaki disease

Researchers from Japan's RIKEN SNP Research Center, collaborating with a team at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), have discovered a new genetic variation that affects a child's risk of getting Kawasaki disease (KD), an illness characterized by acute inflammation of the arteries throughout the body.

17 Dec 2007

Highly promising Alzheimer's and Parkinson's research

The TI Pharma project is a large-scale study into the brain material of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's patients, who gave permission to the Netherlands Brain Bank for their tissue to be used for scientific research.

17 Dec 2007

Profound immune system discovery opens door to halting destruction of lupus

A researcher funded by the Lupus Research Institute (LRI) has discovered an entirely new and powerful molecular switch that controls the inflammatory response of the immune system.

14 Dec 2007

Odyssey Thera granted U.S. patent for animal imaging

Odyssey Thera, Inc. has announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office granted U.S. Patent No. 7,306,914, entitled "Protein-fragment Complementation Assays (PCA) in whole animals: applications to drug efficacy, ADME, cancer biology, immunology, infectious disease and gene therapy.

13 Dec 2007

Discovery of key mechanism underlying idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis

A study led by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers may have found a key mechanism underlying idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a usually fatal lung disease for which transplantation is the only successful treatment.

13 Dec 2007

Milk and egg allergies persist well into the school years and beyond

Considered “transitional” a generation ago, milk and egg allergies now appear to be more persistent and harder to outgrow, according to new research from the Johns Hopkins Children's Center.

13 Dec 2007

Immune compound blocks virus' ability to hijack antibodies

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have shown that a controversial phenomenon known as antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) of infection is suppressed by C1q, a blood-borne immune system compound.

13 Dec 2007

Cell-tracking software speeds drug development

Time is money, especially in the race to discover new anti-inflammatory drugs and bring them to market.

13 Dec 2007

Crimean Congo hemorrhagic fever virus strips away immune system's defensive measures

When the alert goes out that a virus has invaded the body, cells that have yet to be attacked prepare by "armoring" themselves for combat, attaching specific antiviral molecules to many of their own proteins to help resist the invader.

13 Dec 2007

Growth factor receptor affects prostate cancer progression

Breeding mice with a gene for a cellular receptor that can be turned on and off-at will-not only enabled researchers at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston to show how prostate cancer progresses, but also provides a model for studying when a drug targeting a gene will have an effect on the cancer.

10 Dec 2007

New role for miRNA in leukemia discovered

Scientists here have found that mini-molecules called micro-RNA may play a critical role in the progression of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) from its more treatable chronic phase to a life-threatening phase, called blast crisis.

10 Dec 2007

Peanut allergies soar and appear much earlier

Scientists in the U.S. have voiced their concern that peanut allergies are appearing much earlier in children.

4 Dec 2007

Switzerland creates new centre for vaccine research

The Institute will develop an immunology, microbiology and vaccine research laboratory platform to encourage cooperation between scientists working in the field of HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, influenza and cancer vaccine development in Switzerland, from fundamental to clinical researchers.

4 Dec 2007