Researchers discovered that injecting inactive flu virus directly into solid tumors triggered a systemic anti-tumor immune response. Thus, seasonal flu vaccines or other inactivated virus vaccines could be repurposed as agents that convert immune “cold” tumors into immune hot ones. Newman and colleagues found that influenza infection, which is respiratory virus that infects the lungs, … Read more
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
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