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Applied immunology provides services to support the development of biological therapeutics such as monoclonal antibodies, vaccines and diagnostics. Applied immunology is a subdiscipline of immunology.
Agonistic antibodies initiate signalling by the receptors they target, mimicking the activities of native ligands. This Review discusses the clinical successes and failures of agonistic antibodies and explains how recent mechanistic insights should broaden the scope and improve the safety and efficacy of immunotherapies based on these agents.
Rapid methods to identify antigen-specific T cells are essential for developing targeted immunotherapies. Here the authors present a high-throughput MHC class II single-chain trimer platform for the comprehensive profiling of CD4+ T cells, enabling the rapid identification and characterization of virus- and tumour-specific T cell receptors (TCR) at single-cell resolution.
Preclinical and phase 1/2 trial data show that anti-CD38 monoclonal antibody treatment restores platelet counts in patients with immune thrombocytopenia by increasing nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) levels, and low-dose oral treatment with the NAD+ precursor nicotinamide mononucleotide can similarly increase platelet counts without serious adverse effects.
MSN-G-Q, a GQD-coated mesoporous silica system loaded with glucosamine sulfate, enhanced immune cell activation in vitro and promoted antigen retention, DC maturation, T-cell responses, and cytokine production in vivo.
Through CRISPR activation screens, we discovered that metabolite-sensing receptors can be used to mobilize natural killer cells and T cells toward solid tumors. Aberrant tumor metabolism is routinely used for diagnosis. Our work now shows that tumor metabolism can be leveraged for therapeutics through the design of tumor-targeted metabolite-sensing effector immune cells.
Inhibiting macrophage sensing of extracellular matrix mechanics by disrupting focal adhesion kinase function dampens hypertrophic scarring of skin wounds.
An article in Nature Biomedical Engineering demonstrates a needle-free floss-based vaccination platform that can be self-administered and triggers systemic and mucosal immune responses.
In this Tools of the Trade article, Qisi Zhang and Longlong Si describe a method for generating live attenuated vaccines that involves targeting viruses to the host cells’ protein degradation machinery, which attenuates the virus within the host and also enhances viral antigen presentation.
