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Enlarge Image Laid low. A cholera ward in Dhaka, Bangladesh, a country where nearly half the people are infected with the cholera bacterium by age 15. Credit: Mark Knobil/Creative Commons Cholera kills thousands of people a year, but a new study suggests that the human body is fighting back. Researchers have found evidence that the genomes of people in Bangladesh—where the disease is prevalent—have developed ways to combat the disease, a dramatic case of human evolution happening in modern times. Cholera has hitchhiked around the globe, even entering Haiti with UN peacekeepers in 2010, but the disease's heartland is...

A newly published study shows that white blood cells and a cancer cells can fuse and initiate a tumor, providing the first proof in humans of a long proposed theory.Yale Cancer Center scientists, together with colleagues at the Denver Police Crime Lab and the University of Colorado, have found evidence that a human metastatic tumor can arise when a leukocyte (white blood cell) and a cancer cell fuse to form a genetic hybrid. Their study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, may answer the question of how cancer cells travel from the primary tumor’s site of origin to distant organs...

It may be possible to reverse type 1 diabetes by training a patient's own immune system to stop attacking their body, an early trial suggests. Their immune system destroys the cells that make insulin, the hormone needed to control blood sugar levels. A study in 80 patients, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, showed a vaccine could retrain their immune system. Experts described the results as a "significant step". Normally a vaccine teaches the immune system to attack bacteria or viruses that cause disease, such as the polio virus. Researchers at the Stanford University Medical Centre used a vaccine...

In 1962, Leonard Hayflick created a cell strain from an aborted fetus. More than 50 years later, WI-38 remains a crucial, but controversial, source of cells. The woman was four months pregnant, but she didn't want another child. In 1962, at a hospital in Sweden, she had a legal abortion... --snip-- “Other vaccines are produced in a completely morally non-objectionable way. So why aren't we doing this with all vaccines?” says Debi Vinnedge, the executive director of Children of God for Life, a group based in Largo, Florida, that opposes the use of WI-38 in vaccine-making. In 2003, Vinnedge wrote...

A clinical trial for a Type 1 diabetes vaccine has resulted in promising findings, suggesting there may be a future where we can prevent people from getting the disease. Researchers completed a 12-week trial on a DNA-based vaccine on 80 subjects with Type 1 diabetes. The patients were able to maintain levels of a blood-borne intermediary that can stimulate insulin production, and some subjects were able to increase levels. That suggests the cellular changes that occur in patients with Type 1 diabetes may be shut down.  "We're very excited by these results, which suggest that the immunologist's dream of shutting...

Recently immunized people are not more apt to develop Guillain-Barre syndrome Shortly after getting a vaccination, people are no more likely to develop a dangerous nerve-damaging condition called Guillain-Barré syndrome, or GBS, than they are at other times, a new analysis finds. Roger Baxter of Kaiser Permanente Northern California in Oakland, and his colleagues reviewed medical records from 1994 to 2006 of more than 3 million Kaiser members and found 415 diagnoses of GBS. Only 25 of these people had received any vaccine in the six weeks prior to being diagnosed with the condition. None were children. Analyses showed that...

© ShutterstockA US high school teacher and nine of his students have made nanoparticles that can neutralise venom from one of the most dangerous snakes in Africa. These nanoparticles could offer a way to make cheaper and more practical antivenoms.Traditional antivenoms are made by injecting sublethal toxin doses into an animal to invoke an immune response. Antibodies produced in this immune response are then harvested from the animal’s serum. Such antivenoms are not only expensive but they also required refrigeration – a major limitation considering antivenoms are often required in remote locations.Now, Steven Sogo and his best students from...

Enlarge Image Double whammy. Combining a SIRPa protein (CV1 mono) and the cancer drug rituximab virtually wiped out tumors in mice after 29 days. Credit: Adapted From K. Weiskopf et al., Science (2013) To avoid being destroyed by our immune systems, cancer cells engage in a bit of trickery. As they divide to form tumors, they fly under the radar of macrophages, immune cells whose job it is to ingest dead cells and dangerous invaders. Today, many cancer patients are treated with antibody drugs that work in part by marking tumor cells for destruction by macrophages. Although these drugs...

<p>Doctors hope a new experimental treatment could halt the progression of multiple sclerosis.</p> <p>For the first time, researchers have reprogrammed the immune systems of MS patients to stop cells attacking the protective layer around nerves in the spinal cord.</p>

The Kennedy family name is laden with history and brings to mind a definite set of characteristics: glamor, power, intelligence, wealth, influence. Kennedys have had their name on a president, numerous senators, representatives, ambassadors, and other high office holders. The Kennedy dynasty, if you wish to call it that, has seen its share of triumphs and disasters, of course. I need not go into detail; scores of books have been written about them, from putting humans on the Moon and the championing of civil rights to personal tragedies of assassination, death, scandal, and more. Most of these issues are in...

Melbourne researchers have identified an immune protein that has the potential to stop or reverse the development of type 1 diabetes in its early stages, before insulin-producing cells have been destroyed. The discovery has wider repercussions, as the protein is responsible for protecting the body against excessive immune responses, and could be used to treat, or even prevent, other immune disorders such as multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis. Professor Len Harrison, Dr Esther Bandala-Sanchez and Dr Yuxia Zhang led the research team from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute's Molecular Medicine division that identified the immune protein CD52 as responsible...

Drugs that unleash the power of the immune system on cancers are generating considerable optimism in industry, but still Andrew Baum thinks analysts are selling them short. In a 22 May report, Baum, the London-based head of global health-care research at the investment bank Citi, forecasts that in ten years the drugs will be treating 60% of cancers and earning US$35 billion a year. Three elements contribute to his bullishness: the drugs are showing signs of wider effectiveness; many patients will take them for years; and the prices are stratospheric (see ‘Stiff medicine’). One of the first such drugs to...

Self-assembling nanoparticles could make updating seasonal vaccines easier. Under the microscope, they look like simple jacks, with eight spikes jutting out of a central ball. But these protein nanoparticles are science's latest weapon against influenza: a new breed of flu vaccine that provides better and broader protection than commercially available ones — at least in animal tests. Current flu vaccines use inactivated whole viruses and must be regularly remade to target the strains most likely to cause illness in the coming year. But the new nanoparticles would require fewer updates because they induce the production of antibodies that neutralize a...

A new type of asthma drug meant to attack the underlying causes of the respiratory disease slashed episodes by 87 percent in a mid-stage trial, making it a potential game changer for patients with moderate to severe disease, researchers said on Tuesday. "Overall, these are the most exciting data we've seen in asthma in 20 years," said Dr. Sally Wenzel, lead investigator for the 104-patient study of dupilumab, an injectable treatment being developed by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc and French drugmaker Sanofi. The drug also met all its secondary goals, such as improving symptoms and lung function and reducing the need...

Local researchers show online data transfer could lead to safer response in days rather than months Flu pandemic vaccine manufacturing could begin in days, not months, potentially saving a great numbers of lives in case of a severe outbreak, according to a study published Wednesday in Science Translational Medicine. Starting with digitized viral genomes, researchers led by San Diego geneticist J. Craig Venter along with Rino Rappuoli of Novartis, reproduced, or “rescued” flu viruses in just four days and four hours. Traditional methods take about four months. “To date, we have not encountered any influenza virus strain that cannot be...

Brazilian researchers have engineered a protein that should make producing antivenoms to treat spider bites both cheaper and simpler. The protein may also pave the way for a vaccine, as it can prime the immune system to cancel out the worst effects of the spider venom.Venomous spiders inflict pain, injury and even death in several parts of the world. Those bitten often need to be treated with an antivenom, a serum containing specific animal antibodies against the venom toxins. Antivenoms are currently produced by injecting the venom into an animal to provoke an immune response. But a single spider only...

Abstract Interleukin-6 (IL-6) is a classic pro-inflammatory cytokine critical in mounting an effective immune response. It is secreted by a wide array of cell types; however, its effector cells are more restricted, owing to the fact that very few cells, except lymphocytes and hepatocytes, express the functional membrane IL-6 receptor thus reducing the number of IL-6-responsive cells. Trans-signalling, the shedding of the membrane-bound form of the IL-6 receptor into the local microenvironment, greatly increases the range of cells that can respond. IL-6 has been demonstrated to have a pivotal role in the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis, Castleman’s disease and Crohn’s...

Sydney researchers have discovered a new type of immune cell in skin that plays a role in fighting off parasitic invaders such as ticks, mites, and worms, and could be linked to eczema and allergic skin diseases. The team from the Immune Imaging and T cell Laboratories at the Centenary Institute worked with colleagues from SA Pathology in Adelaide, the Malaghan Institute in Wellington, New Zealand and the USA. The new cell type is part of a family known as group 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2) which was discovered less than five years ago in the gut and the lung,...

In a serendipitous discovery, scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have found a way to turn bone marrow stem cells directly into brain cells. Current techniques for turning patients' marrow cells into cells of some other desired type are relatively cumbersome, risky and effectively confined to the lab dish. The new finding points to the possibility of simpler and safer techniques. Cell therapies derived from patients' own cells are widely expected to be useful in treating spinal cord injuries, strokes and other conditions throughout the body, with little or no risk of immune rejection. "These results highlight the potential...

Study could aid development of more effective vaccines. For the first time, scientists have tracked in a patient the evolution of a potent immune molecule that recognizes many different HIV viruses. By revealing how these molecules — called broadly neutralizing antibodies — develop, the research could inform efforts to make vaccines that elicit similar antibodies that can protect people from becoming infected with HIV. The researchers, led by Barton Haynes of Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, North Carolina, found that broadly neutralizing antibodies developed only after the population of viruses in the patient had diversified — something that...