最新发现
In liver metastases, cancer cells attach a fatty acid to a protein called laminin-511, which blunts nearby neutrophils’ ability to kill them. Blocking the enzyme behind this process restored the neutrophils’ cancer-killing power and shrank metastases in lab models — a new drug target for the liver’s uniquely tumor-friendly environment.
A University of Bonn–Peter Doherty Institute team found that malaria infection permanently wipes out specialized CD163 macrophages in the spleen that filter blood and recycle iron. Bone-marrow-derived replacements move in but never fully match the originals’ specialization — a gap that could explain lingering vulnerability to infection after malaria clears.
University of Minnesota researchers found that mice with more permeable intestines had more severe food-allergy reactions, more allergy-driving Th2 cells, and fewer of the regulatory cells that calm the immune system. Oddly, allergies worsened in mild-reaction mice just from housing them with severe-reaction mice and letting their gut microbes mix.
A UHN–Buck Institute team showed that B cells drive CD4 T-cell immunosenescence and the chronic inflammation behind higher infection and disease risk in older people.
Researchers propose the immune system actively polices the gut microbiome, and that age-related imbalance comes less from the microbes changing than from declining immune surveillance.
Weakened macrophages fail to clear aging neutrophils, fueling body-wide inflammation and organ decline. Blocking one receptor (EP2) halted age-related decline across organs in mice.
A Bath–UMass team found that a TRPV2 + CB2R sensor pair guides neutrophils precisely to infection sites, pointing to drugs that fight inflammation only where it happens.
Mayo Clinic found a protein, TRAILshort, that cancer cells use to silence T cells. Blocking it restored T-cell activity and boosted CAR-T therapy in lab models.
Stanford found that during aging, blood immune cells enter the brain and mature into microglia — overturning the idea that the brain renews its own immune cells alone, and hinting at new brain-disease treatments.
