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By Jennifer Jones, M.S.
Spheroids and organoids are two words that, like “butter” and “margarine”, are often referred to interchangeably but have distinct meanings. The progression and adoption of three-dimensional (3D) cell culture models, such as spheroids and organoids, from traditional two-dimensional (2D) cell culture has helped researchers to better understand complex...
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By Victoria Osinski, PhD
As our daily routines shift away from those of the peak pandemic days in 2020 and 2021, you may have found yourself or others getting sick a little more often this fall and winter. In November 2022, The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Health Alert Network released a health advisory reporting increased respiratory virus activity. The frequency of infections and hospitalizations, especially amongst children, were higher than years prior and the CDC found increased incidence of both...
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By Jamshed Arslan, Pharm D, PhD
Post-acute infection syndrome (PAIS) is a phenomenon where ill effects of an infection persist even after the infection itself is over. PAIS in the case of COVID is called the long COVID or post-COVID conditions (PCC): sequelae of
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By Hunter Martinez
The flow cytometer is a critical piece of equipment in any immunologist’s arsenal. Flow cytometry allows for the acquisition of 4-6x105 cells per minute, each resolved at the single cell level. Scientists can interrogate protein, gene expression, as well as metabolic state of a cell using a flow cytometer.
A cytometer accomplishes this feat using the principle of fluorescence. Fluorescence occurs when light from a laser is absorbed by a fluorophore, and then emitted as longer wavelength light or lower...
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By Jamshed Arslan, Pharm D, PhD
Monkeypox is not deadly like its cousin, smallpox, nor is it as contagious as COVID-19. Yet, it continues to scare the world. In May 2022, a multinational outbreak of a contagious pox (rupture of skin and mucous membrane) was in the news and by July 23, 2022, the World Health Organization (WHO) had declared monkeypox a “public health emergency of international concern”. People’s memory of fatal but now eradicated...
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By Natalia Gurule, PhD
Breast cancer is the most frequently identified malignancy in women, accounting for 30% of diagnosed cases of cancer in women in the US annually.1 Although it is so prevalent, 70-80% of patients with early stage, non-metastatic disease experience cures. By contrast, the 5-year survival rate for metastatic breast cancer is 29%.2 Molecularly, breast cancer can be separated into 5 subtypes: Luminal A, Luminal B, Luminal B-like, HER2+, and Triple-...
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By Natalia Gurule, PhD
Inositol- requiring enzyme type 1 alpha (IRE1α) is a serine/threonine kinase that is one of the three transducers within the unfolded protein response (UPR) signaling pathway which becomes activated upon accumulation of misfolded proteins within the endoplasmic reticulum (ER).1 IRE1α contains two...
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By Victoria Osinski, PhD
With its critical role in innate immunity, the nucleotide-binding oligomerization domain-like receptor family, pyrin domain containing 3 (NLRP3) inflammasome is a sensor complex within cells that forms in response to endogenous danger signals, microbial motifs, and other environmental cues. The complex is made up of a sensor (NLRP3), an adaptor called the adaptor protein apoptosis-associated speck-like protein containing a caspase-recruitment domain...
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By Jennifer Jones, M.S.
When you think of antibody producing animals in the lab you probably think of rabbits, mice, goats, and rats. But what about llamas? Llamas probably aren’t the first animal, or even the fifth animal, that comes to mind when you think of antibody generation, but they’ve recently garnered a lot of attention for their potential to treat COVID-19 through neutralization of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.1 Additionally, they’ve shown potential in combatting other...
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By Emily Cartwright, PhD
Traumatic events, work demands, relationship conflicts, and health problems are all examples of psychological stressors that can result in physiological changes including increased cortisol and adrenaline levels. This change in gene expression manifests in physical symptoms such as increased heart rate, blood pressure, headaches, fatigue, muscle pain, and insomnia. In addition to changing gene expression in the short term, psychological stress can impart lasting changes to your DNA by modifying the epigenome.
...
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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....
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By Hunter Martinez
The paradigm shifting view of the immune system being leveraged to target cancer has led to numerous therapeutic breakthroughs. One major cell group responsible for this revelation is a T cell. T cells functioning in fighting cancer can become tired or “exhausted”. T cell exhaustion is a state of cellular dysfunction resulting from repeated stimulation and chronic exposure to...
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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...
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By Victoria Osinski, PhD
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Jamshed Arslan, Pharm D, PhD
In the United States, 1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in her lifetime.1 Despite the prevalence, cancer genesis is a mystery. The heterogeneity of cancers makes it difficult to study the precise mechanism of breast cancer development in vivo. Yet, research has shown that...
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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...
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Jamshed Arslan, Pharm D, PhD
Tissues within the human body are made of a three-dimensional (3D) arrangement of cells working together to perform vital functions. The commonly used 2D monolayer cultures have limited expandability and cell-cell communication, making them less relevant to human physiology. By contrast, in 3D cultures, such as spheroids or organoids, cells can easily permeate through the scaffold allowing the cells to stretch out and have...
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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...
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Jamshed Arslan, Pharm D, PhD
Neurodegenerative disorders involve loss of function and, ultimately, death of neurons. Selective neuronal vulnerability has been observed in a variety of neurodegenerative diseases. For example, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and spinocerebellar ataxia type 2 (SCA2) attack motor neurons, while Alzheimer’s disease (AD),...
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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...
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By Victoria Osinski, PhD
An exciting new study by Casasola-LaMacchia et al. was published earlier this year presenting a novel mass spectrometry method for detecting different MHC class...
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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...
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Jamshed Arslan, Pharm D, PhD
Humans rely on the pancreas for digesting food and generating energy from it. SARS-CoV-2-mediated damage to the exocrine pancreas is evident from the pancreatitis, pancreatic enlargement, and abnormal levels of digestive enzymes in severe COVID-19. Likewise, increased propensity for hyperglycemia,...
