Fat cells surrounding the lymph nodes could switch jobs in response to a distant infection, taking on immune cell functions, researchers at Johns Hopkins University reported in the May 3, 2022, online issue of CellMetabolism.
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have gained new insight into how different inflammatory conditions reinforce each other via trained innate immunity.
Screening a panel of potential autoantigens, investigators at the Karolinska Institute have identified four autoantigens that are targeted by the T cells of multiple sclerosis patients.
Antibiotics drugs discovery, Ursula Theuretzbacher told the audience at the 2022 European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID), has more than one challenge to overcome.
A new animal model of systemic lupus erythematosus (lupus) could be useful for understanding the disparity of the disorder, which is vastly more common in women than men.
By altering the balance between neuronal excitation and inhibition, researchers have reduced cell death and improved outcomes in animal models of stroke.
Solid tumors have been a tougher nut to crack for CAR T cells than B-cell cancers, for two main reasons. Solid tumors have an inhibitors microenvironment that has made it difficult to get durable responses. And identifying antigens as specific as the B-cell markers CD19 and CD22 has been challenging, leading to problems with on-target, off-tumor toxicity.
The tumor microenvironment is critical for the ability of cancers to survive and grow, and some aspects of the microenvironment are studied, and targeted, accordingly. Tumor immunology is one of the most active areas of cancer research and has become a pillar of treatment. Others, not so much. “The nervous system is the last component of the microenvironment that people have left completely unrecognized,” Humsa Venkatesh told BioWorld. Even in brain tumors and metastases, where the presence of neurons is glaringly obvious, there has been little attention to how the two interact until recently.
“We’re still a far cry from reproducible, durable benefits” with CAR T cells targeting solid tumors, Crystal Mackall told the audience at the 2022 annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). But “we’re beginning to see some signals.” Mackall is the founding director of the Stanford Center for Cancer Cell Therapy.
With 11 approved therapeutics in a diversity of targets and indications, antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) have proved their clinical mettle. But they have not yet reached their full clinical potential, which, in the opinion of Astrazeneca plc’s Kenneth Thress, could transform patient care. The strength of ADCs, he told the audience at an educational session at the 2022 annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR 2022), is that it can turn anything into a targeted therapy.
