From a standard blood draw, a clinical lab isolates peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), which are predominantly immune cells, and then counts the abundance of different cell types, along with some basic measures of how they’re functioning.
Researchers from the Atopy (Allergy) Research Center of the Juntendo University Graduate School of Medicine in Japan, led by Prof. François Niyonsaba, along with co-authors Quan Sun and Ge Peng, explored the relationship between melanoma cells and keratinocytes, the most abundant cells in the skin that surround melanoma cells.
When added to standard chemotherapy, a clinical version of the dietary supplement L-glutamine improved survival in an early-phase trial of patients with advanced pancreatic cancer. The study, led by Cedars-Sinai Health Sciences University investigators, was published in Nature Cancer.
Most current flu vaccines—especially those given by injection—do not reliably build strong immune memory in the airways, leaving a gap in protection against initial infection and transmission.
In their quest to understand how cancers take root, grow and spread, scientists have for the past half-century explored the genetic aberrations and microenvironmental peculiarities of tumors and their constituent cells.
Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) has a frustrating ability to adapt. Although this aggressive form of breast cancer can initially respond well to chemotherapy, cancer cells often find ways to survive, allowing the disease to return and become resistant to treatment.
The FDA granted the approval of Revolution Medicines’ daraxonrasib, now to be known as Rasonque, in pancreatic adenocarcinoma 6.5 months ahead of deadline.
Immunotherapies such as CAR T-cell therapy are used primarily to treat cancer. In the future, these patient-specific therapies, manufactured from patients’ own immune cells, could also help cure autoimmune diseases.
When the immune system encounters a virus, it produces antibodies designed to recognize and eliminate the invader. But in some people infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, the immune response goes awry, producing autoantibodies—antibodies that mistakenly attack the body’s own tissues.
Results from an early-stage clinical trial, published in Nature Communications, showed encouraging outcomes among patients with newly diagnosed cancer whose tumors had spread to distant organs.