Boosting Immunity Against Cancer
New approaches for treating cancer are emerging all the time, and one exciting field is finding ways to boost anti-cancer mechanisms already present in the immune system. Now researchers in the US have discovered a new way to dramatically boost the capacity of certain immune cells to fight cancer. They write about their findings in the 8 December online issue of the Journal of Investigative Dermatology. Dr Charles J. Dimitroff and colleagues in the Dimitroff Lab at Brigham and Women's Hospital, a teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, have discovered that lowering the biosynthesis of certain carbohydrates that adorn the cell surfaces of effector immune cells can dramatically boost their capacity to fight cancer.
Potential Vaccine For Ebola
On August 26, 1976, a time bomb exploded in Yambuku, a remote village in Zaire, (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). A threadlike virus known as Ebola had emerged, soon earning a grim distinction as one of the most lethal, naturally occurring pathogens on earth, killing up to 90 percent of its victims, and producing a terrifying constellation of symptoms known as hemorrhagic fever. Now, Charles Arntzen, a researcher at the Biodesign Institute® at Arizona State University, along with colleagues from ASU, the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix, and the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, Fort Detrick, MD, have made progress toward a vaccine against the deadly virus.
Immune Cells Exhausted By Chronic Viral Infection Can Be Revived
Chronic infections by viruses such as HIV or hepatitis C eventually take hold because they wear the immune system out, a phenomenon immunologists describe as exhaustion. Yet exhausted immune cells can be revived after the introduction of fresh cells that act like coaches giving a pep talk, researchers at Emory Vaccine Center have found. Their findings provide support for an emerging strategy for treating chronic infections: infusing immune cells back into patients after a period of conditioning.