A Closer Look: 10 March 2019
A list of articles classified by Nancy R. Gough as good, valuable contributions or not so valuable contributions to the scientific literature.
Search Results for: antibodies
Zapping Chronic Pain with Red Light
Neuropathic pain can be caused by an excessive nerve response to non-harmful (innocuous) touch. Dhandapani and colleagues combined a molecule that binds to the neurons and a light-activated phototoxic chemical to create a treatment that uses light (specifically near infrared light) to alleviate neuropathic pain in a mouse model. To develop this treatment, the authors … Read more
Intratumor Immunotherapy Kills Injected and Distant Tumors
Cancerous tumors must evade immune destruction to survive. They can achieve this by preventing the immune cells from gaining access to the tumor (“immune cold”) or by tipping the balance of immunoactivating and immunosuppressing signals toward immunosuppression. Immunosuppression means that, even if the immune cells penetrate the tumor, they cannot kill the cancer. The cytotoxicity … Read more
Targeting Pyroglutamate Aβ in Alzheimer’s Disease
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
Can you be vaccinated against yourself?
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