Nearly 40 years after the first cytokine-based therapy was approved for the treatment of patients with hairy cell leukemia, investigators are taking a fresh look at ways to leverage these signaling proteins to enhance immunotherapies and vaccines in other cancers.
A recent study published in the journal Nature Immunology discovered autoantibodies against chemokines following severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection.
Sometimes in the laboratory there are unexpected results. "Previously it had been observed that autoantibodies are common in severe Covid patients, those who end up in intensive care," says Jonathan Muri, postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB, affiliated with the Università della Svizzera italiana) and co-author of the study.
A retrovirus known as human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV-1) is known to cause a number of diseases, including inflammatory diseases of the eye. Recently, researchers in Japan have investigated an antibody treatment for inflammatory eye disease in ocular cells infected with HTLV-1.
In a recent study published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, researchers investigated the effects of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) spike (S) glycoprotein on human lung macrophage (HLM) activation and angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) and transmembrane serine protease 2 (TMPRSS2) expression in human lung macrophages.