immunology
milhayser | November 21, 2011Recipients of the 2011 Nobel Prizes were announced the week of October 3. The winners in medicine were honored for their work in immunology, as reported on Tomorrow's Table. Steinman "discovered a new class of cell, known as dendritic cells, which are key activators of the adaptive immune system;" shockingly, he died a few days before the announcement. On We Beasties, Kevin Bonham questions the significance of Beutler's contribution, saying "the conceptual groundwork for its importance in the immune response had already been laid" by a researcher named Janeway. Kevin continues, "giving…
sa smith | September 15, 2011This study is a case study from this study (lol):
Chimeric Antigen Receptor-Modified T Cells in Chronic Lymphoid Leukemia
I imagined this scene happened in one of their lab meetings:
I didnt go in-depth as to how everything was working before, so I thought I would do it now!
This paper is a case report of an individual who had a B-cell cancer. The patient had tried everything and anything recommended to him by scientists (no mention in the report of him disappearing for 6 months to Mexico for 'vitamin c' therapy, or whatever stupid thing wooers push to 'cure' cancer) and he was still dying…
jhalper | September 12, 2011Last month, Penn Medicine put out a press release heralding a "cancer treatment breakthrough 20 years in the making." In a small clinical trial, three patients with advanced chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) were treated with genetically engineered versions of their own T cells. Just a few weeks after treatment the tumors had disappeared, and the patients remained in remission for a year before the study was published.
The release didn't, however, explain those "20 years in the making." In 1989, Prof. Zelig Eshhar of the Weizmann Institute's Immunology Department first published a paper…
sa smith | August 18, 2011A bunch of folks have emailed me about this article, being heavily pimped in pop media:Broad-Spectrum Antiviral Therapeutics
Being SciBlogs resident Debbie Downer, it was good to see Ive trained you all well. The most common comment people emailed along with the link to a pop news article: "Why is this wrong?"/"Why is this not going to work?"/etc
LOL!!
Well, this is a very very very preliminary paper-- The concept itself is clever, the basic science seems fine, and they have taken it beyond 'this works in tissue culture' to 'this can work in mice with a specific pathogen'. Thats more than…
sa smith | August 12, 2011YAAAAAAAAAY!!!
A *big* "THANK YOU!!" to The Thinking Atheist for recording and producing these videos (all of the speeches will be up on his YouTube channel). He brought all the equipment, the audio is great, the video is great, he integrated in the slides from my PowerPoint, dealt with uploading everything to YouTube (I know thats a headache), and on top of it all, he was a super sweet guy. And youll be able to see that for yourself when his speech gets uploaded!!
THANK YOU!!!
sa smith | August 10, 2011Obviously, my first post on Antibodies: Evolution in action isnt the whole story, cause otherwise we would only have... like... eight different antibodies...
:-/
Thats obviously not the case.
Weve got lots and lots and lots of antibodies that recognize lots and lots and lots of different things!
Kevin has a post up at We Beasties on some of the initial stages of antibody development, V-(D)-J recombination!
Quick summary (GO READ HIS POST DONT READ JUST READ MY TWO SENTENCE SUMMARY!): A basic 'antibody' is composed of two heavy chains (blue) and two light chains (red) to make that 'Y' shape…
sa smith | August 2, 2011EMAIL!
Dear ERV--
If I work with kids who are not immunized and I get pregnant, is my fetus at risk?
This is a question I got from an audience member post-FreeOK, and it was too good not to share with everybody!!
First, a disclaimer I dont normally have to state-- I iz not an MD, I am an almost PhD. Talking about the general science of antibodies/mommies/babbies, not giving medical advice, here.
First, the good news:
Fetuses (fetii?) and babbies are protected from pathogens, even though their own immune systems have not matured yet. How do they manage this feat? They steal antibodies…
sa smith | August 1, 2011I did a little experiment on the audience at FreeOK on Saturday (will be posted when The Thinking Atheist gets it up! Should be good quality, hes got all kinds of fancy stuff/tricks!).
*squint*
It wasnt really a matter of 'will they get this?', cause atheists/skeptics/freethinkers are smart.
It was more of 'will they even like this?'
I *think* the answer to my experiment is "People kinda think this is cool!"
So Im gonna roll with it with you all-- A series of posts connecting evolution (something a lot of skeptics are freaking amateur experts on) and immunology (scary) and the science of…
jhalper | July 23, 2011Today's science news from the Weizmann Institute covers research in neurobiology, environmental science and cancer immunology.
⢠In the first, scientists identified a likely biological marker for autism that shows up even in very young children. Diagnoses of autism are generally not possible so early, as the signs typically appear gradually throughout the first 3-4 years of life. The scientists used fMRI to scan the brains of children aged 1-3 who were just starting to show signs of autistic behavior. Their method: scanning the brains of toddlers while they sleep. It seems that even asleep…
sa smith | July 11, 2011*heavy-sigh*
HIV Research World is infecting other fields:
A Highly Conserved Neutralizing Epitope on Group 2 Influenza A Viruses
Media coverage of referenced paper:Discovery of Natural Antibody Brings a Universal Flu Vaccine a Step Closer
No, it doesnt. Unless if by 'universal flu vaccine' you actually mean 'gene therapy for everyone instead of flu shots'.
Look, heres what happens-- Scientists sift through thousands and thousands and thousands of B-cells, the cells that make antibodies, and ID ones that make antibodies that are really good at neutralizing lots of different kinds of…
sa smith | July 7, 2011I have written quite a bit about Cytotoxic-T-Cell-based HIV-1 vaccines here on ERV. Though antibodies can target HIV-1 viruses, and HIV-1 infected cells, CTLs should be the go-to workhorses for killing HIV-1 infected cells.
Pimped-up Souped-up Bionic Assassin Lethal Weapon Killer T-Cells as a cure for AIDS?
HIV-1 CTL Vaccine: OH SHI-
HIV-1 Vaccine: Again, OH SHI-
HIV-1 CTL Vaccine: lol, we are screwed.
HIV-1: Humans are all pink on the inside. Pink, and CD4+ T-cells.
Found another one:
HIV-1 CTL Vaccine: $%@#!
Because HIV-1 is a virus, it uses all of the host cells machinery to produce babby…
sa smith | June 21, 2011No, Im not talking about XMRV ;)
Im talking about using genetically modified viruses to treat prostate cancer :)Broad antigenic coverage induced by vaccination with virus-based cDNA libraries cures established tumors
First, just to be clear, I dont know how this works. :-/
I mean, I know how this 'works', but I dont know how its actually working.
Firstly, it works nothing like the anti-tumor vaccines I have written about previously. In that case, scientists used HSV-1 as a Kamikaze-- the virus delivers a protein to the cancer cell that attracted immune cells to kill the tumor.
Not how this…
sa smith | May 4, 2011Conceptually, its not excessively hard to understand how we develop allergies-- Our bodies generate an inappropriate immune response to a protein that wouldnt otherwise cause us any harm, whether its tree pollen or dust mites or peanut proteins.
But whats the deal with nickel allergies?
Nickel is a cation-- Ni2+. Our bodies are chock full of cations-- calcium, iron, magnesium, etc, and they dont cause any trouble (or youd be dead). And there are lots of other cations that dont hurt anyone (aluminum, silver, etc). Why Nickel?
Plus, Nickel is a metal. Its not a chunk of a protein, its a…
sa smith | April 25, 2011Its no secret that Im not a huge fan of the antibody hunter branch of the HIV-1 research world-- they search through thousands and thousands and thousands of B-cells looking for one or two that can perform a neat trick. They are brilliant people working really hard doing things that have limited application in the real world, and give us limited insight into the basics of HIV-1 virology, but boy howdy, theyve got a great PR department, and Science/Nature eat their publications up.
Identifying broadly neutralizing antibodies is 'neat', but those antibodies are of limited value. The people…
sa smith | April 7, 2011A couple of days ago, Orac directed us towards an article that is one of the funniest pieces of 'Science Journalism' I have ever seen, anywhere. See, those of us on the 'non-kook' side of things have marvelously eloquent writers like Carl and Ed, and inquisitive investigatory journalists like Trine. Sure theyre 'educational', but their work is depressingly devoid of 'WTF LOL!!' moments like this piece by an apparent anti-vax 'science' journalist, Sharyl Attkisson:The author is Helen Ratajczak, surprisingly herself a former senior scientist at a pharmaceutical firm. Ratajczak did what nobody…
sa smith | March 31, 2011Every Spring, you can count on a handful of posts here at ERV on allergies. Ive got em. I hate em.
But I recognize that in many ways, Im 'lucky' as far as allergies go. I only have to deal with them for a few months of the year, I can move somewhere else and not have to worry about them at all anymore, and even though my symptoms are annoying, they certainly arent life threatening.
Not everyone with allergies is this lucky.
Some people are allergic to 'indoor' things that are around year-round. And some of the 'indoor' stuff isnt as simple as not owning a cat-- some people are allergic to…
sa smith | March 3, 2011Scientific conferences are so cool :-D
It s bunch of really smart people getting together to pow-wow about a common interest, sharing their newest data, brainstorming new ideas, trouble-shooting, arguing, finding new collaborators-- its just so friggen cool :-D
Unfortunately, us smaller labs can only budget for one/a couple of these a year, so I am missing out on the 2011 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections :( Its also kind of a downer that Average Joes/Janes arent really allowed to come, not that most people could take a week off work to attend anyway.
Lucky for us…
sa smith | March 2, 2011I love Oklahoma... except for one thing.
You might think that one thing has something to do with insane Christian Evangelicals or creepy perverted 'Conservative' Republicans, but really, you just get used to those sorts of things. I think I would genuinely miss them if they were gone.
No, the 'one thing' is... allergies.
As Ive loled about before-- I never had allergies until I moved to OK. Grew up surrounded by trees, but in Oklahoma, Im apparently allergic to tree pollen (I also think its funny that my dog also has allergies, to trees and grass. A DOG.)
Now normally I harass bug my…
sa smith | February 24, 2011Here at ERV, Ive talked about all kinds of pathogens and all kinds of vaccination strategies against those pathogens and cancers how our immune systems respond to these pathogens and vaccines and cancers and blah blah blah.
When you think 'immunology' you think 'your body protecting itself', or if you watch 'House', you think of an autoimmune diseases like lupus.
You dont think "I feel fine, and Im not infected with anything, and I dont have an autoimmune disease... but my immune system is still FREAKING OUT."
But you should be. Because that is obesity, and how/why people develop Type II…
sa smith | December 3, 2010Glance back at this post for a refresher on what Im going to write about here.
Quick recap:HIV-1 usually evolves around this to 'hide' from CTLs. Maybe it puts a sombrero on the skull so the CTLs think its a party boat. But while HIV-1 evolves ways to hide from cytotoxic T-cells, this escape comes at a fitness cost. So if the sombrero-pirate-flag-HIV is transmitted to someone with a different MHC type whos CTLs couldnt see that pirate flag in the first place, HIV-1 is going to take off the sombrero and regain fitness.
The Problem: HIV-1 is figuring out how to evade CTLs... while maintaining…