immune cells

(University of Rochester Medical Center) A protein that protects some of our immune cells from the most common and virulent form of HIV works by starving the virus of the molecular building blocks that it needs to replicate.

While researchers hope the work will one day lead to a way to make anti-HIV drugs more effective by increasing their potency against the virus, they're also excited about its implications for our knowledge of other pathogens, such as herpes viruses.

(MedPage Today) -- Matching cord blood donors and recipients on the basis of certain maternal immune cells could reduce the risk of a leukemia relapse, researchers reported.

(University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences) Vaccines with broader reach might be made by stimulating specialized immune cells to recognize foreign cell membrane proteins that are shared across bacterial species, say researchers from Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in a report published online today in Immunity.

The approach could be particularly beneficial in preventing infection by multi-drug resistant organisms.

(Emory University) Chronic infections by viruses such as HIV or hepatitis C eventually take hold because they wear the immune system out, a phenomenon immunologists describe as exhaustion.

Yet exhausted immune cells can be revived after the introduction of fresh cells that act like coaches giving a pep talk, researchers at Emory Vaccine Center have found.

(University of Toronto) Researchers at the University of Toronto have found an explanation for how the intestinal tract influences a key component of the immune system to prevent infection, offering a potential clue to the cause of autoimmune disorders like rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis.

(University of Wisconsin-Madison) University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers now have discovered the molecular sensor that detects wound-induced hydrogen peroxide and orchestrates the marshaling of neutrophils and other immune cells, or leukocytes, including those that affect tumors.

(Ohio State University) The bacterium that causes tuberculosis has a unique molecule on its outer cell surface that blocks a key part of the body's defense.

New research suggests this represents a novel mechanism in the microbe's evolving efforts to remain hidden from the human immune system.

The TB bacterium has a molecule on its outer surface called lipomannan that can stop production of an important protein in the body's immune cells that helps contain TB infection and maintain it in a latent state.

(Cornell University) Cornell researchers recently discovered how T. gondii evades our defenses by hacking immune cells, making it the first known parasite to control its host's immune system.

Immunologists from the College of Veterinary Medicine published the study Sept. 8 in PLoS Pathogens, describing a forced partnership between parasite and host that challenges common conceptions of how pathogens interact with the body.

(American Society for Microbiology) New strategy for developing rapid diagnostics; how Q fever invades and replicates inside killer immune cells; protein necessary for bacteria to produce ulcers; and same conditions, different outcome in fungal infection.

(NIH/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases) Scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, have demonstrated why certain immune cells chronically exposed to HIV shut down, and how they can be reactivated.