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Category: biotech/medical

Abstract: Newborns’ immune systems are uniquely primed to tolerate harmless antigens

https://doi.org/10.1172/JCI200062 Here, Tiffany C. Scharschmidt & team report on the early life window for immune tolerance using human samples, finding naïve CD4+ T cells in cord blood have distinct metabolic traits that enable their regulatory potential.

The schematic shows mass cytometry metabolic markers in their corresponding pathways.

Address correspondence to: Tiffany C. Scharschmidt, 1701 Divisadero Street, 3rd Floor, San Francisco, California 94,115, USA. Phone: 415.476.1696; Email: tiffany.scharschmidt@ucsf.edu.

We may finally have a cure for many different autoimmune conditions

Our immune systems never stop targeting cells they regard as a threat, so it’s really bad news when rogue immune cells mistakenly turn on us, as they do in autoimmune conditions. Existing treatments suppress these attacks, but don’t stop them. But a new approach that addresses the cause of these disorders by killing off the rogue cells is proving wildly successful.

“All the big pharma companies are jumping on the bandwagon now,” says Reuben Benjamin at King’s College London. There are dozens of clinical trials under way around the world, and the first treatments could be approved as early as next year, he says, as they’re proving to be vastly superior to those currently used.

The key to these new treatments are genetically engineered cells known as CAR T-cells. These are made from the T-cells that your immune system usually employs to kill off invasive bacteria or virus-infected cells. The T-cells are extracted from a person, programmed to attack a specific kind of cell and then returned to that individual.

Image: Location South/Alamy

A revolutionary cancer treatment is now being applied to a wide range of autoimmune disorders. Columnist Michael Le Page finds it is proving to be even more effective than expected.

By Michael Le Page

Continue reading “We may finally have a cure for many different autoimmune conditions” | >

In vivo evolution of antibody CR3022 expands cross-neutralization of SARS-CoV-2 variants and informs pan-sarbecovirus immunity

Fu et al. use Ig-humanized mice expressing the germline CR3022 heavy chain to reveal how somatic hypermutation rapidly adapts this antibody class for broad sarbecovirus recognition. Sequential immunization drives CR3022-like maturation, while structural analyses show that increased affinity and breadth arise from subtle polar and electrostatic refinements.

Scientists Discover a Key Difference in Brains That Resist Alzheimer’s

The brain changes associated with Alzheimer’s usually lead to a severe loss of memory and cognitive abilities, but not always.

Now, a new study led by a team at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) helps explain why.

Based on postmortem brain research, around 20 to 30 percent of older adults are thought to have asymptomatic Alzheimer’s disease (ASYMAD). Their brains have the characteristic buildup of misfolded amyloid-beta and tau proteins, but they show no detrimental mental effects.

Medicine’s next leap: Delivering gene therapies exactly where they’re needed

A quiet revolution is underway in modern medicine: Drug development is aiming to move from managing disease to correcting it through RNA and gene-editing therapies. But delivering these treatments safely and precisely to the right cells remains a major hurdle—especially in hard-to-target organs like the brain and kidneys.

Now, researchers led by a University of Ottawa Faculty of Medicine team offer highly compelling evidence that an elegant, nature-inspired solution lies in ultra-tiny, bubble-like structures called small extracellular vesicles (sEVs). These metabolic messengers, refined over millions of years of evolution, carry RNA—a nucleic acid that is a chemical cousin of DNA—and other molecules between cells.

In a nutshell, the research team’s new findings show that not all sEVs are alike: their cell of origin determines where they travel, with certain vesicles naturally targeting specific tissues in the body.

Predictors of major adverse cardiac events, high radiation

Percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) for calcified lesions poses risks of major adverse cardiac events (MACE), increased radiation exposure, and contrast use for patients.

Predictors of major adverse cardiac events, high radiation exposure, and contrast use in percutaneous coronary interventions for calcified lesions.

Elicited Repetitive Daily Blindness Associated With Gain-of-Function SCN1A Variants and Responsiveness to Sodium Channel Blockers

Study demonstrates that elicited repetitive daily blindness is a clinical feature in patients with familial hemiplegic migraine 3 because of gain-of-function Nav1.1 variants. Patients in this report responded to sodium channel blocker medications.

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Phage immunoprecipitation sequencing is a powerful technique that can quantify antibody binding to all known viruses, human proteome, bacterial toxins, and allergens

https://doi.org/10.1172/jci.insight.203645 Here, Aaron A.R. Tobian & team use this method to evaluate antibody repertoires in kidney donors with and without HIV, reporting that antibodies against adenovirus infection in kidney donors with HIV may be associated with allograft rejection.

2Department of Pathology, School of Medicine, and.

3Department of Medicine, School of Medicine, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.

4Division of Allergy, Immunology and Transplantation, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH, Bethesda, Maryland, USA.

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