While the world waits for a coronavirus vaccine, scientists are looking to viral and cell therapy treatments for a solution.
Since China began reporting COVID-19 cases to the World Health Organization (WHO), the novel virus has since spread globally. With the declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic, announcements about efforts to develop a coronavirus vaccine are ongoing and constant.
Researchers are studying the importance of white adipose tissue and its role in storing memory T cells.
The idea that if you don’t eat enough, you’ll get sick may be true in some ways, but there is new information available revealing that the immune system may have a strategy to keep fighting infectious agents even when food is scarce.
Scientists in New York studying allergic disease have just published work citing the use of HemaCare-sourced bone marrow mononuclear cells for their research into the mechanisms of immunological memory.
The immune system is a wonderfully complex assembly of interacting cells and tissues that protect us from disease. To function properly, the cells within this system must detect and remember a wide variety of triggering agents.
In a recent study, scientists at UCLA medical school cited using HemaCare sourced PBMCs for their research into a novel cancer immunotherapy strategy. [1]
This promising new strategy is based on cellular structures known as exosomes, which are small membrane-bound packets used to deliver protein “messages” from cell to cell. Because exosomes are known to facilitate cell-to-cell communications, researchers were keen to figure out whether they could be used to communicate the information immune cells need to target cancer.
Traditionally used to treat cancer, new research shows how immunotherapy could also be useful for treating other diseases as well.
The goal of immunotherapy is to modify or influence the immune system in such a way to enhance its disease-fighting ability. Immunotherapies have been extensively studied and developed for the treatment of various forms of cancer. One type of immunotherapy used to target cancer cells is chimeric antigen receptor T (CAR-T) cell therapy. In CAR-T therapy, a patient’s T cells are harvested, genetically engineered to target cancer cells, and grown under laboratory conditions. These cells are then injected back into the patient. There are a number of research endeavors that are now investigating the effectiveness of CAR-T cells for non-cancer diseases, including autoimmune conditions.