News by Subject Medicine & Health

The PIM-2 protein kinase negatively regulates T cell responses in transplantation and tumor immunity, while PIM-1 and PIM-3 are positive regulators, report Medical University of South Carolina investigators in The Journal of Clinical Investigation. Blocking PIM-2 in allogeneic bone marrow transplant dramatically accelerated graft-versus-host disease. In adoptive immunotherapy with autologous T cells, silencing PIM-2 on T cells produced robust tumor immunity, highlighting the importance of PIM-specific inhibition.

A rare opportunity to analyze both blood and tissue samples from human transplant recipients may lead to improved ways of identifying transplant recipients at risk of rejection and treating autoimmune disease.

How do complex biological structures -- an eye, a hand, a brain -- emerge from a single fertilized egg? This is the fundamental question of developmental biology, and a mystery still being grappled with by scientists who hope to one day apply the same principles to heal damaged tissues or regrow ailing organs.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Northwestern University have uncovered cells that flow into and harm the lung soon after transplant. The resulting dysfunction is the leading cause of early death after lung transplantation and contributes to organ rejection that can lead to death months or years later. The discovery, in mice, may lead to drug therapies that target the destructive cells.

An early study suggests it may be feasible to use human aortic grafts preserved by freezing to rebuild windpipe and airway sections removed because of disease.

By expanding the donation pool to include currently deemed 'unfit' organs, researchers say the gap could be closed or narrowed, resulting in more lives saved.

Lung transplant patients who showed evidence of alcohol use before their transplants spent more time in the hospital and on the ventilator, according to a Loyola University Chicago study. Researchers said abstaining from alcohol before transplant could improve outcomes.