Function, regulation, and manipulation of the immune system and inflammatory responses
Many proteins have multiple roles. Often, the key to effective therapy is specificity. Not only does the treatment need to be specific for a particular physiological target, often a protein, but the therapeutic effects involve only a single function or subset of the target’s functions or needs to affect the target only within a specific … Read more
Unlike osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease (1). The body’s own immune system attacks the joints, causing swelling, pain, heat, redness, immobility, and tissue damage that can cause deformation (Figure 1). Because rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease, some types of immunomodulatory agents are specifically useful for treating this condition. Although both types of arthritis … Read more
Some diseases arise because the immune system reacts with normal, healthy cells in the body. In other diseases, lack of an effective immune response contributes to the disease. Cancer cells escape attack by the immune system, in part, by producing a lot of the protein PD-L1 (Gough, 24 May 2017). PD-L1 binds and activates the … Read more
Amyloid-beta (Aβ) is a collection of peptide fragments derived from cleavage of amyloid precursor protein (APP). Some of these fragments are toxic to neurons and aggregate forming oligomers and fibrils. These clusters of Aβ form plaques that accumulate in the brains of people with dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease (Figure 1). Preventing the accumulation of … Read more
What is a vaccine? A vaccine may be described as medicine that stimulates an immune response with a “memory.” Many people also consider a vaccine to be a medicine that prevents a disease caused by a pathogen. Indeed, the first vaccines were ones that prevented infectious diseases, such as polio and measles. Some vaccines have … Read more