News • Putting pathogens on mute
A novel strategy for treating hospital germs
Researchers have developed an innovative method to disrupt the formation of biofilms and thus facilitate the treatment of infections with Pseudomonas aeruginosa.
Immune system
News • Airborne attack
Pollen increase Covid-19 risk
When airborne pollen levels are higher, increased SARS-CoV-2 infection rates can be observed. These results were determined by a large-scale study conducted by an international team headed by researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the Helmholtz Zentrum München. Members of high-risk groups could protect themselves by watching pollen forecasts and wearing dust filter masks.
News • Cancer vaccine research
Tackling tumors with two types of virus
An international research group led by the University of Basel has developed a promising strategy for therapeutic cancer vaccines. Using two different viruses as vehicles, they administered specific tumor components in experiments on mice with cancer in order to stimulate their immune system to attack the tumor. The approach is now being tested in clinical studies.
News • Immune response or breast cancer?
Swollen lymph nodes after Covid-19 vaccination: what women should know
For many women, swollen lymph nodes are a red flag pointing to breast cancer – but may also be a normal immune reaction to a Covid-19 vaccination. In this Q&A, breast imaging experts address the most important facts on the topic.
News • "Faces" of the disease
Covid-19: researchers identify at least 5 variants
According to current studies, the Covid-19 disease which is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus comprises at least five different variants. These differ in how the immune system responds to the infection. Researchers from the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) and the University of Bonn, together with other experts from Germany, Greece and the Netherlands, present these findings…
News • Dangerous immune response
New insight on severe virus attacks on the lungs
In some cases, immune cells in the lungs can contribute to worsening a virus attack. In a new study, researchers at Karolinska Institutet describe how different kinds of immune cells, called macrophages, develop in the lungs and which of them may be behind severe lung diseases. The study, which was published in Immunity, may contribute to future treatments for Covid-19, among other diseases.
News • Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay
Startup develops breakthrough IgG antibody test for Covid-19
ZTA Biotech, a Budapest-based biotech startup, has developed a Covid-19 antibody (IgG) test using the ELISA protocol. This new detection method represents a great step forward in determining if patients have had a coronavirus infection and if they might still have immunity to the disease. Early results have proven 100% in specificity after testing 280 samples, and 100% sensitivity by testing 260…
News • Natural variation impacts virus-relevant proteins
How SARS-CoV-2 benefits from helpers within the human body
Like all viruses, the novel coronavirus is dependent on help from the human host cell. Proteins are the functional units of the cell and enable the virus to enter the host cell or help the virus to replicate. Scientists from Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and from the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH), along with colleagues from the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States, have…
News • Cardiac complications
Immunotherapy drugs can lead to higher risk of heart problems
A study of over a thousand cancer patients treated with immunotherapy drugs has found these patients are at greater risk of heart problems, including death from heart attack or stroke. The patients had either lung cancer or malignant melanoma (a type of skin cancer), for which immune checkpoint inhibitors such as a programmed cell death-1 (PD1) inhibitors or cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-associated…
Article • Finding therapeutic targets
Pancreatic cancer: Seeking viable treatment strategies
Pancreatic cancer has the worst survival rate of any cancers, with immunotherapies currently offering negligible treatment benefits for patients. To help identify new therapeutic approaches, researchers from the University of Oxford have been focusing on leukocyte infiltration as a prognostic marker of the disease. Their study and findings were outlined by Dr Shivan Sivakumar during a session…
Article • Profiling the coronavirus
Experts unlock Covid-19 secrets
Experts have identified two distinct immunological and cellular profiles in the lungs of Covid-19 patients which they believe could help define treatment pathways. From some of the earliest Covid-19 autopsies conducted in Europe, Swiss-based researchers have performed integrative digital pathology and transcriptomic analyses of lung tissues of 16 coronavirus patients who died from respiratory…
News • Biomaterial research
Wound-healing hydrogel to improve skin tissue repair
Researchers at Duke University and the University of California, Los Angeles, have developed a biomaterial that significantly reduces scar formation after wounding, leading to more effective skin healing. This new material, which quickly degrades once the wound has closed, demonstrates that activating an adaptive immune response can trigger regenerative wound healing, leaving behind stronger and…
News • Immune reponse to COVID-19
‘Mini-lungs’ reveal early stages of SARS-CoV-2 infection
‘Mini-lungs’ grown from tissue donated to Cambridge hospitals has provided a team of scientists from South Korea and the UK with important insights into how COVID-19 damages the lungs. Writing in the journal Cell Stem Cell, the researchers detail the mechanisms underlying SARS-CoV-2 infection and the early innate immune response in the lungs.
News • Improved patient response
Existing heart drugs may help with PD(L)1 immunotherapy
Researchers have found that a class of commonly-used heart drugs may also improve patients’ responses to anti-cancer immunotherapies called PD(L)1 inhibitors, according to preliminary findings to be presented at the 32th EORTC-NCI-AACR Symposium on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics.
News • Interrelationship
Impact of COVID-19 on cancer treatment
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted virtually every aspect of cancer care and research– from introducing new risks for cancer patients to disrupting the delivery of cancer treatment and the continuity of cancer research.
News • Fending off the coronavirus
The role of T-cells in SARS-CoV-2 virus defense
Our immune system can efficiently fend off viral diseases. Two types of immune cells play an important role in this process: The T-cells, which firstly can directly destroy virus-infected cells and secondly enable the formation of efficient, virus-neutralizing antibodies by B-cells. These two cell types also play a crucial role in the immune defense against SARS-CoV-2 infection. Whereas antibody…
News • Coronavirus research
Boosting the immune system: a potential treatment strategy for COVID-19?
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to claim lives around the world, much research has focused on the immune system’s role in patients who become seriously ill. A popular theory has it that the immune system gets so revved up fighting the virus that, after several days, it produces a so-called cytokine storm that results in potentially fatal organ damage, particularly to the lungs.
Article • Re-evaluation of the coronavirus disease
COVID-19: A tale of two conditions
The SARS CoV-2 virus which causes COVID-19 may have been named prematurely. As more has become known about the infection, the severe disease does not appear to be a respiratory syndrome at all. Patients who only have a respiratory illness tend not to have a severe condition, while patients who develop a severe condition tend to have non-respiratory conditions, primarily thrombotic or hyper-immune…
News • Caught in the loop
How COVID-19 leads the immune system astray
Contrary to what has been generally assumed so far, a severe course of COVID-19 does not solely result in a strong immune reaction – rather, the immune response is caught in a continuous loop of activation and inhibition.
Video • Immune system sabotage
SARS-CoV-2 induces shutdown of protein synthesis
Although its name is relatively unspecific and indeed opaque, the Nonstructural Protein 1 (Nsp1) encoded by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which is responsible for the current pandemic, has now been shown to have a devastating effect on host cells. Nsp1 is in fact one of the central weapons used by the virus to ensure its own replication and propagation in human hosts. Nsp1 was identified as a…
News • Cross-presenting dendritic cells
How breast cancer sneaks past local immune defenses
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Associate Professor Mikala Egeblad and her colleagues describe a newly understood way by which breast cancer cells sabotage a key player in the body’s immune system. That key player provides local immune surveillance by activating killer T-cells, but if it cannot mature and do its job, breast cancer cells can escape detection from the immune system,…
News • Coronavirus research
How type 1 interferon deficiency hints at severe forms of COVID-19
Which patient will develop a severe form of COVID-19? This is an essential question which must be answered in order to improve the individual management and the prognosis of these patients. In a publication in the journal Science, teams from the Assistance publique – Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP), Inserm, Université de Paris, Institut Pasteur and Institut Imagine describe a unique and unexpected…
Article • The difficulty? Unpredictability in the entire process
Immunotherapy for lung cancer patients
Better outcomes, more favourable prognoses – oncologists and their lung cancer patients didn’t dare to dream about it. Finally, there might be hope. The so-called checkpoint inhibitors (immunotherapy drug) have been used successfully, albeit not for every patient. They are a double-edged sword, with risks as well as opportunities, as explained by Professor Cornelia Schäfer-Prokop.
News • SARS-CoV-2
COVID-19: why do patients immune response differ?
It remains one of the key questions of the current corona pandemic: Why do people infected with SARS-CoV-2 experience varying degrees of COVID-19, the disease which it triggers? Researchers, led by Professor Mascha Binder from University Hospital Halle (Saale), have investigated more than 14 million receptor sequences of B and T cells, i.e. immune cells, obtained from blood samples of COVID-19…
News • Immune system overreaction
Sepsis can cause long-term damage in the brain
Infections can trigger a particularly strong immune reaction of the body (termed sepsis). In such a sepsis the immune system reacts so strongly that not only the pathogens but also tissues and organs are damaged. In a study with mice, researchers from the Technische Universität Braunschweig were able to show that sepsis can have long-term effects on the brain and learning behaviour even after…