Immunology News and Research

Latest Immunology News and Research

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

Queen's University Belfast opens new centre for cancer research

Queen's Chancellor Senator George Mitchell officially opened the University's new £25M cancer research centre aimed at stopping the spread of cancer.

29 Nov 2007

New genetic findings on malaria parasite

The malaria parasite has been studied for decades, but surprisingly, little is known about how it behaves in humans to cause disease.

29 Nov 2007

Discovery of link between moderate exercise and decreased inflammation of damaged skin tissue

In recent years, researchers at the University of Illinois have uncovered a host of reasons for people to remain physically active as they age, ranging from better brain function to improved immune responses.

29 Nov 2007

Deeper insights into the workings of the immune system

The first lines of defense in our immune systems are specialized mobile units that check the identity of cells to determine whether they are 'self' or 'foreign.'

27 Nov 2007

Discovery of new signaling molecule could lead to the development of new treatments for cancer

Investigators at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have discovered a new signaling molecule that prevents immune responses from running amok and damaging the body.

21 Nov 2007

New human rhinovirus associated with pediatric respiratory tract infection in Germany

Using a rapid, sensitive, and inexpensive diagnostic tool called MassTag PCR, scientists at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health's Center for Infection and Immunity implicated a new human rhinovirus as the cause of severe pediatric respiratory tract infections in Europe.

21 Nov 2007