This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American The very first line of defence against any ...

Innate immunity constitutes the body’s first line of defence against invading pathogens. This ancient, evolutionarily conserved system is activated within minutes of encountering foreign agents, ...

Immunotherapy is a type of cancer treatment that uses the body's own immune system to fight tumor cells. While much focus has been on engaging T-cells for fighting cancer, less attention has been ...

Researchers have identified mutations in a set of proteins that predispose their carriers to preeclampsia, a complication that shows up in between 5 percent and 10 percent of pregnancies. Their work ...

In a recent study published in The New England Journal of Medicine, researchers reviewed selected acute-phase proteins concerning their production, structure, and function. The advent of severe acute ...

Although the complement system forms part of the innate immune system, it can cause damage to the body in some cases. This is because unwanted complement activation contributes to many autoimmune and ...

University of Pennsylvania researchers have found a promising new treatment for periodontitis using a component of the immune system called complement, according to a new study in the Journal of ...

Oncolytic virus immunotherapy has been proposed as a step forward for cancer treatment because it can kill cancer cells while activating the immune system. However, its current clinical application is ...

1 Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Rheumatology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 2 Biomedical Research Institute of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 3 Department of Molecular Genetics ...

Cancer immunotherapies, including cancer vaccines, harness and amplify the immune system’s natural ability to detect and attack cancer cells. In this illustration, immune T cells (pink) attach to a ...