immune cells

Newly Described Type of Immune Cell and T cells Share Similar Path to Maturity, According to New Penn Study
05/14/2013 - 09:02

Labs around the world, and a core group at Penn, have been studying recently described populations of immune cells called innate lymphoid cells (ILCs). Some researchers liken them to foot soldiers that protect boundary tissues such as the skin, the lining of the lung, and the lining of the gut from microbial onslaught. They also have shown they play a role in inflammatory disease, when the body’s immune system is too active.

 

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Discovery of endogenous antibiotic in the brain
05/06/2013 - 10:01

Scientists from the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) of the University of Luxembourg have discovered that immune cells in the brain can produce a substance that prevents bacterial growth: namely itaconic acid.

 

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Immune cells keep cholesterol down
02/22/2013 - 10:41

Recent research at Karolinska Institutet describes how liver uptake of cholesterol from the blood is regulated by the immune system. These findings, which are published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation, can explain how a certain type of immune cell prevents atherosclerosis.

 

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Researchers Show How Cells' DNA Repair Machinery Can Destroy Viruses
01/23/2013 - 09:35

A team of researchers based at Johns Hopkins has decoded a system that makes certain types of immune cells impervious to HIV infection.

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Multiple sclerosis is remote controlled
09/10/2012 - 09:02

A healthy brain is practically free from immune cells, because the nervous system is separated from the rest of the body via specialized blood vessels that prevent immune cells from entering it from the blood. Up to now it has been unclear how in MS immune cells can overcome this barrier and seemingly pass unhindered into the brain tissue. A research team, initially at the Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology in Martinsried, and later at the University of Göttingen, could now show that these disease-causing immune cells are programmed in the lung to be more motile and to efficiently break through blood vessel barriers.

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Blood cancer cells initiate signalling cascade
08/13/2012 - 08:36

Researchers in the group of Prof. Dr. Hassan Jumaa, Centre for Biological Signalling Studies (BIOSS) of the University of Freiburg, Department for Molecular Immunology, have identified a new mechanism that causes immune cells to convert into malignant cancer cells. In Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia (CLL), one of the most common types of blood cancer in the Western world, cells themselves carry the key for the pathogenic transformation, the scientists report in the journal “Nature”. Understanding these underlying mechanisms could facilitate new therapies with reduced side effects.

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