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Read our latest stories on the people and scientific innovations making a difference in patients’ lives.
The ‘Ecology’ of Cancer: Studying the ‘Soil’ that Enables the Disease to Thrive
Borrowing from the field of ecology, cancer is now being examined in terms of the relationship between a cancer cell and the traits of its local environment — the tissue, cells and blood vessels — that help it to thrive. The severity of a cancer diagnosis is most often viewed through the lens of its stage (I – IV), which defines whether a tumor is isolated to its original location or has metastasized, potentially becoming more dangerous by spreading to other parts of the body. Recent...
Common Misconceptions About Leukemia Explained
More than 62,000 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with Leukemia a year, a severe blood cancer, where the bone marrow produces abnormal cells. Leukemia, a name derived from the Greek words for “white blood,” is a cancer of the blood cells that begins in the bone marrow, the spongy tissue inside our bones that serves as our body’s blood cell factory. When a patient has leukemia, abnormal immature white blood cells (called blasts) multiply uncontrollably, filling up the bone marrow, and...
Metabolism and Immunology: Using Lessons From Metabolic Diseases to Treat Autoimmune Disorders
By regulating the metabolism of immune cells, researchers are uncovering novel ways to suppress inflammation and treat autoimmune diseases. Scientists have long recognized that metabolic-related disorders such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes and obesity have links to inflammation. But what if the converse were also true? What if inflammatory conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease had a metabolic component to them? In recent years, researchers in the...
How Immuno-Oncology Taps Into the Body’s Own Immune System to Fight Cancer
Traditional approaches to fighting cancer such as radiation therapy and chemotherapy have saved countless lives over the years, but they are often accompanied by debilitating side effects because they also kill healthy cells in addition to attacking the malignant cells. One of the most important advances in cancer therapies is a field known as immuno-oncology, which uses methods that tap into a patient’s own immune system to detect and destroy cancer cells. Experts predict that immuno...
Decoding Science: Cytokines
From the Greek “cyto” for cell and “kinos” for movement, these chemical messengers orchestrate the immune system’s activity, and may be the key to understanding and treating autoimmune disorders. Behind every complex organization, from great militaries to multinational corporations, is an equally sophisticated communications system. For the immune system, the body’s complex system for fighting off disease and infections, cytokines are the vital protein messengers that mediate activity...
The Great Migration: Tracking Immune Cells’ Travels
Scientists are studying how immune cells move to develop better treatments for autoimmune diseases. Birds migrate. People migrate. And so do cells. T-cells squeezing between collagen fibers. PLOS ONE/Coles JA Our immune cells, in particular, are always on the move, constantly patrolling the body for foreign invaders. If an unwelcome visitor enters through the nose, mouth or eyes, or there’s a break in the skin, these nimble soldiers are ready to flood the attack site and send out signals...
Checking Our Gut Microorganisms’ Disease-Fighting Might
New gene sequencing tech is helping researchers harness the bacteria, viruses, and fungi that live in our bodies to fight disease. At this very moment, trillions of bacteria and other germs are swimming in your gut and crawling on your skin. While the thought may make you cringe, these microscopic squatters — collectively known as the human microbiome — are essential to our survival. And now a growing body of research shows how this microbiome could point the way to new treatments and a...
foundations-science
Hungry, Hungry Macrophages (video)
Macrophages, the human immune system’s horde of cells that clear the body’s detritus by eating it, may be induced to gorge — in the name of helping combat Alzheimer’s and other diseases. Macrophages have an appetite for destruction. (Their name means “big eater” in Greek.) As the immune system’s primary phagocyte — or cell that has the astounding ability to engulf and digest another particle — macrophages are, among other things, the human body’s primary cleanup system. They exist in every...
Immunity’s Double-Edged Sword
Human’s complex immune system is the vanquisher of pathogens, but it can also turn on itself. In a stroke of “evolutionary brilliance,” according to Pfizer immunologist Aaron Winkler, humans and other higher organisms developed specialized immune systems that protect us from the vast diversity of pathogens found in nature, from flu viruses to pinworms. Through random genetic variation, our bodies constantly generate millions of new white blood cells, the foot soldiers of the immune system...
Good Guy/Bad Guy: Macrophages vs. Pinworms
In the battlefield that is our human bodies, pathogen-chomping macrophages face off against harmful intruders that include the likes of parasitic pinworms. Bad Guy: This foe seems like something out of a horror film, a parasitic worm named Enterobius vermicularis (above right), commonly called a pinworm. Pinworms hatch in the small intestine after its eggs are accidentally, and unknowingly, ingested after contact with fecal matter and improper hand-washing. The pinworm is particularly...
Growing a Tiny Gut
A miniature version of a working gut, grown in a lab. (Meritxell Huch) Creating a miniature intestine in a lab — called an organoid — can help researchers see how real guts will react to disease and medicine. Organoids sound like the stuff of Dr. Frankenstein’s mind — body parts grown in labs, created for scientific experimentation. What they are in reality are living tissues, grown from seed cells, that can tell researchers a lot about the way human organs will react to diseases and...
Good Guy/Bad Guy: B-Cells vs. Ebola
(CDC/Dr. Frederick A. Murphy; Steve Gschmeisserner/Science Photo Library) In the fight for immunity, our B-cells play the role of watchful attack dogs. A virus like Ebola has other ideas. Unbeknownst to most of us most of the time, there are death matches on the microscopic level going on in our bodies most every minute of every day, instigated by everything from paper cuts to viral infections. This new series we call Good Guy/Bad Guy offers a close-up look at the battlefield that is...
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