T cells tagged posts

Washington University to lead national clinical trial investigating therapy. A new study – in mice – suggests that blocking a major inflammatory pathway that is activated in pancreatic cancer makes the tumors sensitive to chemotherapy and a type of immunotherapy that prompts the immune system’s T cells to attack the cancer cells. The therapy more than doubled survival in a mouse model of pancreatic cancer.

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most...

Doctors and scientists from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and from Heidelberg University’s Medical Faculty Mannheim have successfully tested a neoantigen-specific transgenic immune cell therapy for malignant brain tumors for the first time using an experimental model in mice.

Cellular immunotherapies that specifically target malignant tumors are thought to be a promising approach in cancer medicine. However, a basic requirement for this kind of targeted immunotherapy is to identify target molecules that are found exclusively on the tumor cells and are recognized by the immune system.

Malignant gliomas are incurable brain tumors that spread in the brain and cannot be completely removed by surgery...

An inflammatory autoimmune response within the central nervous system similar to one linked to neurodegenerative diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS) has also been found in the spinal fluid of healthy people, according to a new Yale-led study comparing immune system cells in the spinal fluid of MS patients and healthy subjects. The research, published Sept. 18 in the journal Science Immunology, suggests these immune cells may play a role other than protecting against microbial invaders—protecting our mental health.

The results buttress an emerging theory that gamma interferons, a type of immune cell that helps induce and modulate a variety of immune system responses, may also play a role in preventing depression in healthy people.

“We were surprised tha...

Immunotherapy combo that encourages immune cells to consume tumors could lead to long-term remission for glioblastoma. A combination of immunotherapy agents that encourages some immune cells to eat cancer cells and alert others to attack tumors put mice with a deadly type of brain cancer called glioblastoma into long-term remission, a new study led by UT Southwestern scientists suggests. The finding, published online March 20, 2020, in Nature Communications, could lead to new therapies that may significantly extend survival for human glioblastoma patients, which stands at an average of 15 months after diagnosis even with current state-of-the-art therapies.

The immune system has two branches: innate immunity, an evolutionarily older system that continually scans the b...