Fat cells surrounding the lymph nodes could switch jobs in response to a distant infection, taking on immune cell functions, researchers at Johns Hopkins University reported in the May 3, 2022, online issue of Cell Metabolism.

Dianthus Therapeutics Inc. has, appropriately, flowered in springtime. The Waltham, Mass.-based company emerged from stealth with $100 million in series A funding and lofty ambitions to rewrite the rules of targeting the complement system with a pipeline of antibodies that bring new levels of selectivity to an area of innate immunity that has proved difficult to target.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have gained new insight into how different inflammatory conditions reinforce each other via trained innate immunity.

A handful of developers are advancing drug prospects in the localized scleroderma (LS) space, with candidate mechanisms that range from cell-based gene therapy to IL-4 or IL-6 antagonism to PDE4 blocking, and with efforts that involve approved as well as experimental compounds.

Screening a panel of potential autoantigens, investigators at the Karolinska Institute have identified four autoantigens that are targeted by the T cells of multiple sclerosis patients.

A new animal model of systemic lupus erythematosus (lupus) could be useful for understanding the disparity of the disorder, which is vastly more common in women than men.

Versant Ventures is committing $50 million in series A funding to Cimeio Therapeutics Inc., which aims to bring new possibilities in terms of disease targeting and safety to bear on a wide range of cell therapy applications, including hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) and adoptive cell transfer.

A new mechanism has been discovered by which cells infected with the foodborne pathogen Listeria monocytogenes are able to escape the immune response, and which at the same time confers a higher probability that infected cells will adhere to and infect cerebral vessels and cross the blood-brain barrier.

Major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class II molecules aberrantly induced by viral infection or inflammation, have been shown for the first time to form self-antigen/MHC class II complexes that initiate autoantibody production, according to a Japanese study published in the March 4, 2022, edition of Science Advances.