While largely neglected over decades during which adaptive immunity captured most of the attention, innate immune mechanisms have now become central to our understanding of immunology. Innate immunity provides the first barrier to infection in vertebrates, ...
The advent of immunotherapy, such as immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) and adoptive transfer of cytotoxic lymphocytes, has transformed the clinical care of cancer. However, a significant proportion of patients are resistant to immunotherapy or experience re ...
A spinal cord injury (SCI) triggers a cascade of molecular and cellular responses involving inflammatory cell infiltration and cytokine release, apoptosis, demyelination, excitotoxicity, ischemia, and the formation of a fibrotic scar surrounded by an astro ...
Communication between the intestine and other organs such as the lungs, brain or bones is mediated by several metabolites, like short-chain fatty acids or bile acids, that relay information about nutritional and microbiota status. Bile acids are endogenous ...
Traditional cell cultures have long been fundamental to biological research, offering an alternative to animal models burdened by ethical constraints and procedural intricacies, often lacking relevance to human physiology and disease. Moreover, their inabi ...
Dendritic cells (DCs) are specialized myeloid cells with the ability to uptake, process, and
present antigens to T lymphocytes. They also generate cytokine and chemokine gradients that
regulate immune cell trafficking, activation, and function. Monocyte-de ...
Chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) are synthetic, transmembrane proteins that trigger immune cell signaling following their engagement. They have been first utilized in T cells and later in natural killer (NK) cells to redirect their cytotoxicity toward a s ...
Cell-cell communication is fundamental for immune balance. Multivalent interactions of surface receptors at immune interfaces drive specific communication, with stimulatory and inhibitory signals guiding the immune outcome. Notably, the valency, affinity, ...
The use of CAR technologies has revolutionized cancer treatment. Their unprecedented efficacy against B cell malignancies has opened the doors for a lot of excitement and research in the field. These synthetic receptors are composed of an antigen recogniti ...
Lymphomas are a group of heterogeneous blood cancers that arise from lymphocytes. The two primary clinical classifications of lymphomas are Hodgkin's lymphoma (HL), and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL). In particular, B-cell lymphoma refers to the malignancies ...
The understanding of cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions via receptor and ligand binding relies on our ability to study the very first events of their contact. Of particular interest is the interaction between a T cell receptor and its cognate peptide-m ...
Hepatitis B virus remains a major medical burden with more than 250 million chronically infected patients worldwide and 900,000 deaths each year, due to the disease progression towards severe complications (cirrhosis, hepatocellular carcinoma). Despite the ...
Viruses initiate invasion by binding to cell surface glycoproteins. Materials mimicking the carbohydrate motifs of these glycoproteins, such as heparan sulfate (HS) and sialic acid (SA) can block viral attachment and inhibit the infection. Multivalent disp ...
Biofilm formation is generally recognized as a bacterial defense mechanism against environmental threats, including antibiotics, bacteriophages, and leukocytes of the human immune system. Here, we show that for the human pathogen Vibrio cholerae, biofilm f ...
Colorectal cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer death worldwide. Early-stage disease can be detected with preventative medical screening and is treatable with surgical resection. Sixty-percent of patients, however, are diagnosed with advanced-stage ...
Vaccine technology is still facing challenges regarding some infectious diseases, which can be addressed by innovative drug delivery systems. In particular, nanoparticle-based vaccines combined with new types of adjuvants are actively explored as a platfor ...
Cancer immunotherapy has become an attractive strategy among different therapeutic modalities over the past few years and has showed great success in the clinic. However, there are many outstanding challenges hindering the current immunotherapies. In my Ph ...
Recent breakthroughs in cancer immunotherapy, exemplified by immune checkpoint blockade and CAR T cell therapy, have achieved remarkable clinical success. However, the majority of cancer patients fail to respond to immunotherapy or suffer from relapse. Nan ...
The pathogenic bacterium Streptococcus pneumoniae (S. pneumoniae) can invade the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and cause meningitis with devastating consequences. Whether and how sensory cells in the central nervous system (CNS) become activated during bacteri ...
Background Innate immune cells play a crucial role in responding to microbial infections, but their improper activation can also drive inflammatory disease. For this reason, their activation state is governed by a multitude of factors, including the metabo ...