Archive for immunotherapy
Gasdermin E: A new approach to cancer immunotherapy
Tumors have figured out various ways to prevent the immune system from attacking them. Medicine, for its part, has fought back with cancer immunotherapy. The major approach uses checkpoint inhibitors, drugs that help the immune system recognize cancer cells as foreign. Another method, CAR T-cell therapy, directly engineers peoples’ T cells to efficiently recognize cancer ... Read More
S1P and its receptor: New approaches to cancer?
In 1998, when Timothy Hla, PhD, and his colleagues identified and cloned the receptor for sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P), it generated a lot of excitement. S1P, a lipid originally discovered in the 1960s, was known to play various roles in the body and in disease. But it wasn’t thought that lipids could have receptors, and it wasn’t ... Read More
PET imaging shows if PD-1 cancer immunotherapy is working
PD-1 is a protein on our T cells that normally keeps these immune cells from running amok. A growing number of cancer drugs are designed to inhibit PD-1, enabling patients’ T-cells to attack and kill cancerous cells. PD-1 blockers such as pembrolizumab (Keytruda) have been helpful in treating several cancers including melanoma, non-small cell lung ... Read More
20-week treatment makes life safer for kids with peanut allergy
A study last week in The New England Journal of Medicine suggests that exposing infants to peanuts can provide lasting protection against peanut allergy. But what about peanut-allergic children right now? They and their parents live a life of precautions — from pre-screening birthday party menus to segregation at the school lunch table — to ... Read More