Immunotherapy

New research from the Stanford University School of Medicine and the Buck Institute for Research on Aging is demonstrating a new tool that can calculate a person’s immune system age, which could help predict frailty and disease before symptoms appear.

Australian researchers have identified the mechanism that enables some immune cells to outlast others. The findings point to a treatment method that could improve the success of cancer immunotherapy and help patients beat severe viral infections.

It’s hard to overstate the incredible influence our gut microbiome has on our health. Now, researchers have found that certain metabolites from intestinal bacteria could boost the cancer-killing effect of immunotherapy.

Researchers at Karolinska Institute in Sweden have made a breakthrough in the arms race that is cancer immunotherapy. The team has blocked a protein that silences an important tumor-suppressing protein, allowing the latter to get back to work.

Immunotherapy is a promising avenue for cancer treatment, but it has trouble against solid tumors without triggering major side effects. Now, researchers have developed a new form of the treatment that supercharges a different type of immune cell.

Results from a trial testing a type 1 diabetes vaccine have found the treatment effective in patients with a specific genetic variant. If validated in larger trials the treatment could be helpful in around 50 percent of patients with type 1 diabetes.

In recent years effective new methods of cancer treatment are emerging. Now, scientists at the University of Konstanz have found that combining two experimental methods – a vaccine and an immunotherapy – helps boost the success rate in mouse models.

One of cancer’s crafty tricks involves manipulating the host’s immune cells to protect tumors instead of fighting them. Now researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital have turned the tables again, transforming these cells back into cancer killers.

Aging comes for us all – but perhaps the unpleasant symptoms don’t have to. In a new study, scientists have found a kind of anti-aging immunotherapy, reinvigorating immune cells to better clear out defunct cells that contribute to the aging process.

A new review article is presenting a promising case for phenformin, an old diabetes drug related to metformin, being repurposed as an adjunct to new immunotherapy cancer treatments. A phase 1 clinical trial is underway to test the novel combination.

A new article is reporting promising results from a Phase 1 human trial testing a vaccine designed to help a patient's immune system better target brain tumors. The data suggests the vaccine is safe and stimulates a significant immune response.

Infections of Cryptococcus fungi are potentially fatal, because the immune system has a hard time fighting off the invaders. But now researchers have given it a helping hand by adapting a cancer immunotherapy technique called CAR T cell therapy.