Researchers have constructed a protein out of amino acids not found in natural , discovering that they can form a complex, stable structure that closely resembles a natural protein. Their findings could help scientists design drugs that look and act like real proteins but won't be degraded by enzymes or targeted by the immune system, as natural proteins are.

The complex task of launching a well-organized, effective immune system attack on specific targets is thrown into high gear when either of two specific enzymes chop a protein called LAG-3 off the immune cells leading that battle, according to investigators at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

Autoimmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis occur when the immune system fails to regulate itself. But researchers have not known precisely where the molecular breakdowns responsible for such failures occur.

University of Minnesota stem cell researchers, together with collaborators at Stanford University, have successfully used adult stem cells to replace the immune system and bone marrow of mice, offering the promise of new therapies for people in the future. With this advance and other recent discoveries, the researchers are winning over previous skeptics.

Scientists in Georgia are reporting successful lab tests of new polymer microparticles that show promise as a long-sought way to deliver drugs directly into the cell structures responsible for inflammation. Those immune system structures, macrophages, devour and destroy foreign substances such as invading bacteria and cellular debris.

Answering one of the oldest questions in human physiology, researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have discovered why the body's immune system - perpetually on guard against foreign microbes like bacteria - doesn't attack tissues in the small intestine that harbor millions of bacteria cells.

Scientists at the University of Liverpool have found how two molecules fight in the blood to control the spread of cancer cells

Drawing upon a massive database established with funds from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), scientists have completed the most comprehensive analysis to date of published influenza A virus epitopes--the critical sites on the virus that are recognized by the immune system.

The Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) and AlgoNomics have joined forces to develop a technology that verifies whether certain proteins induce an immune response in humans. The collaboration between VIB and AlgoNomics has yielded a biological test that supplements the current computer simulations.