immunotherapy tagged posts

Regulatory DC immunotherapy can be effective for food allergies and suggest that induction of Foxp3− regulatory T cells might be a useful strategy for tolerance induction in this context.

A new immunotherapy technique has been developed that nearly eliminates the allergic response to peanut and egg white proteins in food-allergic mice, reducing the anaphylactic response by up to 90% with only one treatment. The findings open the door to test this new allergy treatment in “humanized mice” – mice with non-existent immune systems implanted with cells from a human immune system, eg, from a peanut-allergic person. With Health Canada approval, the first human trial could begin in about one year, Gordon said.

“If we can reliably ‘cure’ food allergies, or related conditions such as asthma or aut...

Engineering T cells to treat pancreatic cancer Researchers hope to have a human version of the T cell in clinical trials this year

Hingorani, a pancreatic cancer specialist, teamed up with Fred Hutch immunotherapy experts Drs. Phil Greenberg and Ingunn Stromnes in successful efforts to breach the cancer’s physical and immunological walls using immunotherapy, a type of treatment that harnesses or refines the body’s own immune system with T-cells engineered to recognize and destroy cancer cells.

Specifically, Hingorani’s team created T cells with a high ffinity to a “relatively” tumor-specific antigen. Why relatively? Notoriously difficult pancreatic tumor cells don’t produce many unique proteins that allow for completely tumor-specific T cells...