immune cells tagged posts

AI tool reveals what attracts immune cells to tumors and what keeps them away

Immune cells (yellow) being attracted to a cancer cell (green).

Researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and collaborating institutions in Texas developed an artificial intelligence (AI) model that helps explain how immune cells find their way to specific locations in the body and why they avoid others. The findings could help scientists better understand cancer, autoimmune diseases and treatment response.

The study, published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, was co-led by Tao Wang, Ph.D., associate professor of bioinformatics and computational biology, and Linghua Wang, M.D., Ph.D., professor of genomic medicine, executive director and head of the Center for Cellular Language Intelligence, associate member of the James P. Allison Institute and focus area co-lead with the Institute for Data Science in Oncology.

“Whil...

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Immune cells get transformed into fungus-fighting nanoparticles

Black circular blobs on a gray background.
Transmission electron microscopy image of the antifungal nanodiscs. Image courtesy of Liangfang Zhang lab

Tiny particles made from the membranes of human immune cells could offer a promising new way to fight fungal infections that are becoming harder to treat. Engineers at the University of California San Diego created antifungal nanoparticles that target Candida albicans, a fungus responsible for oral and vaginal yeast infections as well as life-threatening bloodstream infections. In mice with severe Candida infections, the nanoparticles greatly reduced the amount of fungus in major organs and significantly improved survival.

The research, published in Cell Biomaterials, was led by Liangfang Zhang, a professor in the Aiiso Yufeng Li Family Department of Chemical and Nano Engineerin...

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How your life story leaves epigenetic fingerprints on your immune cells

How do nature and nurture shape our immune cells?

The COVID-19 pandemic gave us tremendous perspective on how wildly symptoms and outcomes can vary between patients experiencing the same infection. How can two people infected by the same pathogen have such different responses? It largely comes down to variability in genetics (the genes you inherit) and life experience (your environmental, infection, and vaccination history).

These two influences are imprinted on our cells through small molecular alterations called epigenetic changes, which shape cell identity and function by controlling whether genes are turned “on” or “off.”

Salk Institute researchers are debuting a new epigenetic catalog that reveals the distinct effects of genetic inheritance and life experience on various types of immune cells...

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Depression linked to presence of immune cells in the brain’s protective layer

Depression linked to presence of immune cells in the brain's protective layer
CSD stress leads to increased numbers of LysM+ myeloid cells in vascular channels connecting skull BM to meninges. Credit: Nature Communications (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-62840-5

Immune cells released from bone marrow in the skull in response to chronic stress and adversity could play a key role in symptoms of depression and anxiety, say researchers.

The discovery—found in a study in mice—sheds light on the role that inflammation can play in mood disorders and could help in the search for new treatments, in particular for those individuals for whom current treatments are ineffective.

Around 1 billion people will be diagnosed with a mood disorder such as depression or anxiety at some point in their life...

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