Cancer vaccines such as Dendreon Corp.'s Provenge (sipuleucel-T) harness dendritic cells to fight tumors. In fact, the discoverer of dendritic cells – Ralph Steinman, who in 2011 won the first posthumous Nobel Prize for his discovery – treated himself with therapies based on his own discovery after he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
Scientists reported that they have developed a vaccine that reduced monkeys' risk of becoming infected from simian immunodeficiency virus, or SIV – the monkey equivalent of HIV – by 80 percent per exposure.
Researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have gained new insights into why the hepatitis C virus needs the microRNA miR-122 as a partner in crime – and in doing so, have described a new general mechanism by which miRNAs can act on their targets to affect gene expression.
Sepsis is widely believed to be due to an out-of-control inflammatory response, and efforts to develop drugs to treat that condition have focused on reining in the immune system.
Ask most folks in biotech about their notion of a typical antibody, and it will probably be an antibody that blocks a receptor to fight cancer, or maybe autoimmune disease.
Prevention, the old saying goes, is the best medicine. But in 2011, a clinical trial demonstrated medicine can also be prevention – an insight that was named Breakthrough of the Year by Science magazine and its publishing society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Any infection is a battle between the body and the immune system. Killing as many bacterial foot soldiers as possible is one way to help the body win this battle. But another possibility is to strip bacteria of their weapons in the fight without killing them outright – an approach termed non-bactericidal.
Back-to-back studies published in Nature this week reported a comprehensive catalog of proteins that HIV interacts with in human cells, then followed up on one of those interactions in greater detail. The studies provide new insights into how HIV uses its host – and also a wealth of possible new targets to treat HIV infections.
The evidence on evidence-based medicine speaks for itself. The approach is a vast improvement over everything that came before, and over current rival approaches. It’s often enough to give its practitioners a bit of hubris –which is why it’s so important to remember that evidence-based medicine can’t tell us everything we want to know, either. Possible pitfalls and limitations of evidence-based medicine were on stark display at a press conference of the American Society of Hematology last week, where not one, but two studies reported results that were the opposite of what one might suspect from looking at one part...
