Engineered killer T cell recognizes HIV-1's lethal molecular disguises

The question of whether or not to continue to pursue the development of T-cell-based HIV-1 vaccines has been a source of controversy following last year's widely publicized failure of the field's most promising candidate, a vaccine developed by Merck known as V520.

New research, just published by researchers from the University of Georgia, provides the first evidence that a key gene may be crucial to maintaining the production of the thymus and its disease-fighting T-cells after an animal’s birth.

The level of PD-1 expression has been proved by recent studies to be positively correlated with the extent of HBV-specific T cell impairments. However, the degree of T cell exhaustion which affects the disease statuses of hepatitis B patients has so far been only evaluated in restricted and small groups of patients between those with established chronicity and subjects with acute HBV infection.

National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientists have identified a protein that plays matchmaker between two key types of white blood cells, T and B cells, enabling them to interact in a way that is crucial to establishing long-lasting immunity after an infection.

A team of Canadian and Finnish scientists has identified a protein able to stimulate the production of T-cells, the white blood cells involved in the recognition and the elimination of infectious agents.

Using artificial cell-like particles, Yale biomedical engineers have devised a rapid and efficient way to produce a 45-fold enhancement of T cell activation and expansion, an immune response important for a patient’s ability to fight cancer and infectious diseases, according to an advance on line report in Molecular Therapy.

That the cell nurturing growth factor interleukin-7 can help ramp up the ability of the immune system to remember the pathogenic villains it encounters is well known.

A research team led by Dr. Ciriaco A. Piccirillo of McGill University’s Department of Microbiology and Immunology has discovered that in some individuals, the specialized immunoregulatory T-cells that regulate the body’s autoimmune reactions may lose their effectiveness and become “lazy” over time, leading to the onset of type 1 diabetes.

Going through airport security can be such a hassle. Shoes, laptops, toothpastes, watches and belts all get taken off, taken out, scanned, examined, handled and repacked. But "T-rays", a completely safe form of electromagnetic radiation, may reshape not only airport screening procedures but also medical imaging practices.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have found that proteins known to promote cell death are also necessary for the maturation and proliferation of immune cells. Activation of T-cell receptors on the surface of lymphocytes by foreign antigens initiate a calcium-mediated signaling pathway that ends in cell differentiation and growth.