Antibody News

By Victoria Osinski, PhD

Despite advances in the development of cancer immunotherapies, those specifically targeting tumors still remains limited. Currently, there is great interest in utilizing chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapies: a strategy that utilizes patients’ T cells and genetically engineers them to produce a T cell receptor to mount an attack against cancer cells. While CAR T cells can effectively kill cancer cells in tumors, they often come with off-tumor effects because these CARs’ target antigens are found endogenously in the body....

By Jamshed Arslan, Pharm D, PhD

What do nuts, dairy and red meat have in common? In addition to the fact that they are all edible, one of the answers is L-arginine. This amino acid improves T cell’s response against tumor cells, which typically have low concentration of L-arginine. Increasing L-arginine intra-tumorally, in turn, increases the effect of immunotherapy drugs called immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs). To understand ICIs, consider two examples of...

By Victoria Osinski, PhD

What’s “Natural” About Natural Killer (NK) Cells?

For immunologists, the term cytotoxicity often conjures up images of an army of antigen specific CD8+ T cells deploying to find and kill their target cells. However, natural killer (NK) cells are a distinct subset of cytotoxic immune lymphoid cells with both innate and adaptive immune functions. Innate functions are first-...

Jamshed Arslan, Pharm D, PhD

The dorsal root ganglia (DRG) are a collection of cell bodies of sensory nerves carrying sensory information – including nociception, mechanoreception and proprioception – from peripheral nervous system (PNS) to the central nervous system (CNS). Degeneration of DRG, as observed in the autosomal recessive disease Friedreich ataxia (FRDA), manifests physiologically as impaired speech, difficulty walking, and loss of sensation in arms and legs. To mitigate FRDA, cell replacement therapy (CRT), such as...

By Natalia Gurule, PhD

 

Historically, DNA repair pathways have been viewed from a tumor cell centric vantage point. Currently, the tumor microenvironment (TME) is recognized as having the potential to be a source of components that can participate in how a cancer cell responds to DNA damage. Within the TME, there are metabolites that can promote tumor cell growth and modulate immune cell...

Jamshed Arslan, Pharm D, PhD

SARS-CoV-2 induces both humoral and cellular immunity. A vaccine or natural infection invokes SARS-CoV-2-specific humoral components (antibodies from activated B cells) and cellular response (CD4+, CD8+ T cells) that can protect against subsequent infections. Following SARS-CoV-2 infection, the levels of...

By Victoria Osinski

Pyroptosis is an inflammatory form of programmed cell death characterized by the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines IL-1β and IL-18.^1,10 It is a process distinct from apoptosis and necrosis (Table 1) and has been observed in the setting of multiple diseases including, but...

Jamshed Arslan, Pharm D, PhD

Cholesterol is an essential part of animal cell membranes. Cholesterol-rich lipid rafts maintain the fluidity and protein trafficking of plasma membranes. Cellular ABCA1 protein moves cholesterol and certain fats outside of the cell. Dysregulated lipid rafts and cholesterol metabolism...

By Jamshed Arslan, Pharm D, PhD

Vaccination generates protective adaptive immune memory without the need for an actual viral infection. COVID-19 vaccines help recognize and fight off SARS-CoV-2 infection. In December 2020, US-FDA approved mRNA vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and...

By Emily Cartwright, PhD

What is the ENS?

When it's late in the afternoon and you smell a delicious bag of popcorn in the microwave, your mouth begins to water and your stomach starts to grumble. These behaviors are a result of communication between your enteric nervous system (ENS) and brain. The ENS is an arm of the peripheral nervous system and is critically important for function of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, controlling everything from salivation to excretion. Dysfunction of the ENS leads to...

By Victoria Osinski

The outbreak of COVID-19 resulting from the transmission of the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) has resulted in many cases of illness typically manifesting in minor to severe respiratory symptoms. However, additional cardiovascular complications have been observed in a subset of patients as well, prompting further inquiry into the mechanisms of infection and response to SARS-CoV-2. While advancements have been made into answering these questions, it is still...

By Jamshed Arslan, Pharm D, PhD

There is good news and bad news related to COVID-19, a disease caused by SARS-COV-2 infection. Good news first: the vast majority of otherwise healthy individuals remain asymptomatic. The bad news though is that even the asymptomatic population is at risk for COVID-19-related brain damage called NeuroCOVID. The neurological manifestations related to COVID-19 may be less severe and less frequent in milder cases as compared to the hospitalized patients. This article will outline the mechanism behind NeuroCOVID and COVID-19-related neuropsychological...