Category Biology/Biotechnology

The sites where our bodies come into contact with the outside world—via skin, the surface of the eye, inside the mouth, the lining of the intestine and the urinary tract, for example—are known as barrier tissues.

Helping to defend those tissues are innate lymphoid cells, or ILCs, which when faced with a threat, stimulate proteins called cytokines that further activate the immune system and control the intestinal microbiome.

These cells naturally diminish with aging or can be depleted by certain medical conditions.

ILCs are made inside bone marrow and circulate in the blood. But how are they activated to mobilize and travel to their target sites to replenish the depleted pool of tissue ILCs?

A Michigan Medi...

Eczema, a skin inflammatory disease that causes dry, itchy and inflamed skin, affects millions worldwide. Eczema is associated with an altered skin microbiome and higher colonization by Staphylococcus aureus.

A study, led at New York Medical by postdoctoral fellow Anish R. Maskey, Ph.D., focuses on the natural compound berberine and its impact on eczema exacerbated by S. aureus. The findings, presented at ASM Microbe, shed light on berberine’s ability to inhibit S. aureus colonization and alleviate eczema symptoms without adverse effects.

Current treatments often fall short—topical antibiotics can give temporary relief, but risk development of antibiotic resistance, and steroid use can potentially result in topical steroid withdrawal (TSW) syndrome...

Scientists at Weill Cornell Medicine discovered a previously unknown link between two key pathways that regulate the immune system in mammals — a finding that impacts our understanding of chronic inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). This family of disorders severely impacts the health and quality of life of more than 2 million people in the United States.

The immune system has many pathways to protect the body from infection, but sometimes an overactive immune response results in autoimmune diseases including IBD, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis and multiple scler...

Northwestern Medicine scientists have discovered that an attenuated (weakened) virus can help eliminate cancer in mice. In addition, mice that were treated with this virus were more resistant to developing tumors later in life.

The attenuated virus—lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV)—works and is safe even in immunosuppressed mice. That’s a critical finding, as many cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy and other cancer treatments have suppressed immune systems.

“An important aspect about this viral-based therapy is that it demonstrates safety and efficacy even in an immunosuppressed host,” said corresponding author Pablo Penaloza-MacMaster, an assistant professor of microbiology-immunology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine...