Free radicals have long been seen as purely harmful, but a new Science study finds that cancer-fighting T cells need them, and that tumors release an antioxidant protein, PRDX1, to switch the immune attack off. Here is what was found in mice and what it could mean for immunotherapy.
A 2024 review in Hypertension explains how immune cells, inflammatory signals and even oxidative by-products can help push blood pressure up and damage organs, and why that opens the door to new treatment ideas.
Long COVID, ME/CFS, PTSD, rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis start in very different ways, yet all can end in crushing fatigue. A new genomic analysis suggests they may disrupt the same biological networks.
New mouse research from WashU Medicine suggests the immune cells that fuel tau-driven brain damage are trained in lymph nodes outside the brain, opening the door to treatments that never need to cross the blood-brain barrier.
For decades, our picture of how the body kills dangerous or infected cells has been built almost entirely around blood-derived immune cells, T cells, natural killer cells, neutrophils. A new study out of Stanford, published in Cell, just added something... Continue Reading →
Most anti-inflammatory drugs work the same way: they turn down the immune system as a whole, which calms the flare-up but also leaves patients more vulnerable to infection. Researchers at VIB and KU Leuven, working with international collaborators, have found... Continue Reading →
One of the immune system's oldest branches, called complement, may be influencing the severity of COVID disease, according to a new study from researchers at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Among other findings linking complement to COVID, the researchers found... Continue Reading →
The bacterium that causes syphilis, Treponema pallidum, likely uses a single gene to escape the immune system, research from UW Medicine in Seattle suggests. The finding may help explain how syphilis can hide in the body for decades, thereby frustrating the... Continue Reading →
A first cell atlas of the human thymus gland could lead to new immune therapies to treat cancer and autoimmune diseases. Researchers from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, Newcastle University and Ghent University, Belgium, mapped thymus tissue through the human lifespan... Continue Reading →