CDC and local experts anticipate new fall COVID vaccines in September
As COVID-19 settles into a permanent presence in our lives, annual vaccinations are becoming the norm.
Aug 21, 2024
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As COVID-19 settles into a permanent presence in our lives, annual vaccinations are becoming the norm.
Aug 21, 2024
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During the COVID-19 pandemic, mRNA vaccines came to the rescue, developed in record time and saving lives worldwide. Researchers in the Precision Vaccines Program at Boston Children's Hospital have developed two novel technologies ...
Aug 21, 2024
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As researchers estimate that nearly all Americans have been exposed to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, whether through infection or vaccination, we are no longer "immunologically naive"—in other words, our immune ...
Aug 27, 2024
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Scientists at the University of Minnesota and the Midwest Antiviral Drug Discovery (AViDD) Center have made a surprising discovery: antibodies can have opposite effects on viral infections in human cells.
Sep 10, 2024
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Northwestern Medicine investigators have uncovered how antibody responses are regulated by epigenetic factors commonly mutated in cancers, according to a study published in Nature Immunology.
Aug 15, 2024
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In the past two decades, immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have revolutionized cancer treatment, showing promising results against various solid tumors. A recent study reviews recent developments in ICIs, focusing on new ...
Aug 13, 2024
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Immunotherapy has revolutionized cancer treatment, with immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) playing a pivotal role. However, current ICIs, primarily monoclonal antibodies, face significant challenges like poor tissue penetration, ...
Aug 22, 2024
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In a recent online publication in Science China Life Sciences, researchers from the laboratory of Leng-Siew Yeap at the Shanghai Institute of Immunology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine published a review ...
Aug 22, 2024
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As winter rolls on in Australia, respiratory viruses are everywhere. One of the main culprits is respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, which has caused more than 145,000 infections around the country so far this year. Most ...
Aug 27, 2024
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Multiple myeloma (MM) is a complex hematological malignancy with significant unmet needs. While conventional therapies have significantly improved patient survival, the disease remains incurable. A review, led by Qizhong ...
Aug 20, 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