Review highlights advances and future needs in AL amyloidosis treatment
AL (immunoglobulin light chain) amyloidosis is a rare disease that often results in progressive organ dysfunction, organ failure and eventual death.
Jun 26, 2024
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AL (immunoglobulin light chain) amyloidosis is a rare disease that often results in progressive organ dysfunction, organ failure and eventual death.
Jun 26, 2024
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Antibodies can be likened to keys, with antigens as the corresponding locks. Each antibody is uniquely shaped to fit a specific antigen, much like a key fits its particular lock. The precise ability to bind to disease-causing ...
Jun 25, 2024
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Even though COVID-19 manifests as a mild and short-lived disease in most people, some suffer extremely severe symptoms; in the worst cases, these patients die due to complications such as respiratory failure or thromboembolism. ...
Jun 19, 2024
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An international team of microbiologists and infectious disease specialists from Australia and the U.S. has found that children exposed to variants of influenza B demonstrate a bigger immune response to the same strain when ...
Results from a new trial indicate that immunotherapy could successfully be used to treat the most common form of colorectal cancer, also known as bowel cancer.
Jun 14, 2024
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There are various types of widow spiders, including black, red, and brown varieties in North and South America, the Australian redback spider, and several button spider species that inhabit South Africa. In Europe, Latrodectus ...
Jun 12, 2024
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Headache, chills, tiredness may be evidence of a supercharged defense, according to UCSF-led study.
Jun 10, 2024
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Monoclonal antibodies are crucial therapeutics due to their high specificity and binding affinity for epitopes (the precise sites where an antibody attaches itself to an antigen, triggering an immune response). Since the ...
Jun 10, 2024
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Advanced clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) is a deadly form of kidney cancer with few treatment options; even with new immunotherapies, only around one in 10 patients ultimately survive.
Jun 4, 2024
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Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center have isolated human monoclonal antibodies against influenza B, a significant public health threat that disproportionately affects children, the elderly and other immunocompromised ...
Jun 1, 2024
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Antibodies (also known as immunoglobulins, abbreviated Ig) are gamma globulin proteins that are found in blood or other bodily fluids of vertebrates, and are used by the immune system to identify and neutralize foreign objects, such as bacteria and viruses. They are typically made of basic structural units—each with two large heavy chains and two small light chains—to form, for example, monomers with one unit, dimers with two units or pentamers with five units. Antibodies are produced by a kind of white blood cell called a plasma cell. There are several different types of antibody heavy chains, and several different kinds of antibodies, which are grouped into different isotypes based on which heavy chain they possess. Five different antibody isotypes are known in mammals, which perform different roles, and help direct the appropriate immune response for each different type of foreign object they encounter.
Although the general structure of all antibodies is very similar, a small region at the tip of the protein is extremely variable, allowing millions of antibodies with slightly different tip structures, or antigen binding sites, to exist. This region is known as the hypervariable region. Each of these variants can bind to a different target, known as an antigen. This huge diversity of antibodies allows the immune system to recognize an equally wide diversity of antigens. The unique part of the antigen recognized by an antibody is called an epitope. These epitopes bind with their antibody in a highly specific interaction, called induced fit, that allows antibodies to identify and bind only their unique antigen in the midst of the millions of different molecules that make up an organism. Recognition of an antigen by an antibody tags it for attack by other parts of the immune system. Antibodies can also neutralize targets directly by, for example, binding to a part of a pathogen that it needs to cause an infection.
The large and diverse population of antibodies is generated by random combinations of a set of gene segments that encode different antigen binding sites (or paratopes), followed by random mutations in this area of the antibody gene, which create further diversity. Antibody genes also re-organize in a process called class switching that changes the base of the heavy chain to another, creating a different isotype of the antibody that retains the antigen specific variable region. This allows a single antibody to be used by several different parts of the immune system. Production of antibodies is the main function of the humoral immune system.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA