Gou Young Koh and colleagues at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Daejeon, Korea have discovered that macrophages, a type of immune cell, impair fluid drainage during peritoneal inflammation. They present these findings in the October 2009 issue of the American Journal of Pathology.

Telomeres, structures that cap the ends of cells' chromosomes, grow shorter with each round of cell division unless a specialized enzyme replenishes them. Maintaining telomeres is thought to be important for healthy aging and cancer prevention.

Parkinson disease is a neurodegenerative disorder that impairs movement, balance, speech, and other functions. It is characterized by the loss of nerves in the brain that produce a substance known as dopamine.

A UCSF study has found that a surprisingly high number of maternal cells enters the fetus during pregnancy, prompting the generation of special immune cells in the fetus that suppress a response against the mother.

Adding an artificial tumor-specific receptor to immune system cells called T-lymphocytes that target a particular virus extended and improved the cells' ability to fight a form of childhood cancer called neuroblastoma, said researchers form Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital in a report that appears online today in the journal Nature Medicine.

Researchers have shown that self-induced breaks in the DNA of immune cells known as lymphocytes activate genes that cause the cells to travel from where they're made to where they help the body fight invaders.

Oliver Söhnlein and colleagues, at the Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, have identified a new function for a number of proteins secreted by human immune cells known as neutrophils or PMNs: they enhance the uptake of bacteria by other immune cells (known as macrophages) that are capable of destroying the microbes.

Vaccines have led to many of the world’s greatest public health triumphs, but many deadly viruses, such as HIV, still elude the best efforts of scientists to develop effective vaccines against them.

Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have used yeast cells to better understand a collection of proteins associated with the formation of actin networks, which are essential to cell movement.

Two new clinical reports shed light on why some people suffer from recurrent episodes of idiopathic anaphylaxis--a potentially life-threatening condition of unknown cause characterized by a drop blood pressure, fainting episodes, difficulty in breathing, and wheezing.

A new study of immune cells battling a chronic viral infection shows that the cells, called T cells, become exhausted by the fight in specific ways, undergoing profound changes that make them progressively less effective over time.

Although plants lack humans' T cells and other immune-function cells to signal and fight infection, scientists have known for more than 100 years that plants still somehow signal that they have been attacked in order to trigger a plantwide resistance.