antibody

Synthetic Antibody Rallies Immune Cells Against Ovarian Cancer

Study Also Reveals Immunotherapy’s Target on Cancer Cells

antibodies

In the 1995 film The Usual Suspects, Kevin Spacey’s con man character famously remarks, “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.” The same could be said of cancer, which somehow persuades the body it is not a threat. Cutting-edge treatments called immunotherapies remove this façade and encourage the immune system to attack cancer cells. New IRP research in mice has demonstrated the promise of a new immunotherapy for treating ovarian cancer and identified a marker on cancer cells that could help clinicians identify patients who are most likely to benefit from the therapy.

Three-Armed Antibody Could Offer Defense Against AIDS

Four Questions with Dr. John Mascola

HIV-infected T cell

The disease known as human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, attacks and destroys cells vital to the immune system. This leaves the millions of people living with HIV less able to fight other infections and can lead to an extremely severe form of immune system deficiency called acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), which was responsible for nearly 770,000 deaths in 2018 alone. As of 2019, there are approximately 37.9 million people around the world living with HIV/AIDS.

Although HIV/AIDS has been recognized as a serious public health crisis, finding effective treatments, or a vaccine to prevent infection in the first place, is not a simple task. The HIV virus has many different types and strains — similar to the flu — which makes developing vaccines and treatments extremely challenging, as the virus is constantly changing. At the NIH, there are a number of ongoing collaborative research projects aimed at providing new options for those diagnosed with HIV/AIDS and those at risk for contracting the virus in the future.

How Asking a Very Basic Research Question Led Us to a Model For At Least 3 Diseases

When I started this project, it was not my objective to develop a model for any specific disease, nor did I even suspect that the ultimate result would be some insight into autoimmune disease. The basic research question I was asking was why there are sequences in the 3’ untranslated region of the interferon-gamma mRNA that are more highly conserved than the coding region of the gene.

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