Immunity Health News

A team of the leading cancer researchers in Canada are being funded $3.5 million by the Terry Fox Foundation to conduct experiments aimed at training the immune system to recognize and target cancerous tissue.

“Tumours avoid immune attack by convincing the immune system that they are normal, like a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” said Bramson. “Our strategies are designed to teach the immune system how to spot the tell-tale signs of the wolf. In this way, the tumours will no longer be able to hide, but the healthy tissues will be left untouched.”

Read more.

An Israeli biopharmaceutical company has developed a way to train the body’s immune cells to attack cancer by introducing “angered” immune cells from a donor.

The company takes T-cells from a normal donor and produces them ex-vivo in a nine-day proprietary culture process in a bioreactor. There is no need to match the donor to the recipient as required in BMT procedures. The AlloStim product is an intentional mismatch to the recipient. In the bioreactor the cells are activated with monoclonal antibody-coated particles that are removed before they are given to the patient.

“We provoke these cells, so that they become very ‘angry’ immune cells that are highly stimulated,” explains Har-Noy. “Then we infuse them into the patient. The patient’s immune system sees these new ‘angry’ cells as a great danger to the body, and rallies to the defense to eliminate the threat, releasing an array of inflammatory cytokines, in what is a bit like the fight or flight response of adrenaline.”

So far, this has only been tested on mice. Clinical trials on advanced cancer patients begin in 2008.

Read more.

I highly recommend this article by The Guardian Observer about the prostitutes outside of Nairobi, Kenya, who have been found to be immune to HIV/AIDS.

I remember first hearing about these women while teaching in Uganda in 1997, but haven’t heard much about them since then.

The article is long, but riveting. It outlines the personal story of Agnes, and what brought her to prostitution, as well as the medical research clinics begun by Canadians that eventually picked up on the fact that, year after year, certain prostitutes in the study kept testing negative for HIV.

In a related article, The Manila Times is looking back at 25 years of the AIDS epidemic.

An entire generation has grown up with AIDS as part of their horizon. Let’s hope these women from Nairobi can help remove it again.

Researchers at the University of Nottingham have not only developed a new antibody against malaria, but also a way to test it.

Gambian adults immune to malaria produce antibodies that bind strongly to a region of a parasite antigen called merozoite surface protein 1 (MSP1). The two together then bind to the Fc-receptor (FcR) found on immune system cells in the human and the parasite is destroyed.

In the past, drug developers have had no way to test potential vaccines in the absence of humans and higher primates, which has slowed the progress of investigative compounds.

Instead, the researchers have used mice. Although mice do not get sick when infected with P. falciparum (malaria virus), the scientists haveovercome this by genetically engineering a mouse parasite to produce an antigen that the human immune system recognises.

Then, the researchers altered the mouse’s immune system further so that it displayed human FcRs. Now that the animal model had been developed, the team took the antibodies produced naturally by Gambian’s immune to malaria and used them to develop their own antibody. In subsequent tests of these antibodies, the mice were cured of “an otherwise lethal malaria infection”.

The passive immune response caused by such an antibody, could provide the basis of a new vaccine. Even if this new therapy doesn’t ever make it to market, the development of a in vivo test that Pleass described as “has significant advantages over the use of new world primates”, could enable others to develop malaria vaccines much quicker.

Most of us cringe at the very utterance of the word “herpes”, because of its sordid associations. But herpes is part of a group of viruses called herpesviruses, eight of which infect humans and which most of us get at one time or another. They include glandular fever, chicken pox, shingles, some rare types of cancer, and herpes itself.

After the initial infection is fought off, the virus enters a latent phase with no symptoms but with the potential for later reactivation. In extreme cases this can lead to chronic inflammation, causing autoimmune diseases or some types of cancer.

But a study (published in Nature 447: 326-330) by Erik Barton et al., at the Washington University Medical School, has shown that herpesvirus-infected mice, once they entered the latent stage, were surprisingly resistant to certain types of bacteria–in particular, the bubonic plague.

The latent stage of the virus works by releasing high levels of cytokines, which help to coordinate the immune system’s defense against infection. Barton believes that all herpesviruses provide bacterial resistance, and that by depriving children of some of these infections as children we are not priming their immune systems against future threats.

At the same time, many government health agencies are promoting the chicken pox vaccine. Perhaps we should think twice.

Ever wonder what that is they squeeze into your arm every flu season? Well, check out want this slightly-exaggerated-proportions but-still-very-funny video demonstration.

On the other hand, you might just want a printed list of ingredients–you know, in case you want to shop for your own vaccine recipe.