STAT

OCTOBER 6, 2023

If the Covid-19 pandemic has shown us one thing, it is how little we really know about how the human immune system works. Decoding and harnessing the power of the human immune system is one of the great frontiers of biomedicine.

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Immunity Immunization Vaccines 303

STAT

NOVEMBER 24, 2023

The evidence presented to the WHO team pointed to what’s sometimes called an immunity gap that was created by the pandemic. But a rapidly organized meeting Thursday between the World Health Organization and health officials in China assuaged much of that concern.

Immunity 357

Immunity Immunization 357

STAT

MARCH 27, 2024

Researchers studying the ways these systems change with age refer to them collectively as “immunosenescence,” or, more poetically, the “ twilight of immunity. ” But even as scientific understanding of the phenomenon has grown over the past decade, the forces driving it remain murky.

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Immunity Immunization 260

STAT

FEBRUARY 28, 2024

The ads, which tell parents to contact their general practitioners if they’ve missed getting their kids immunized, are designed to capture parents’ desires to keep kids safe. Read the rest…

Immunity 282

Immunity Immunization Vaccines 282

STAT

MARCH 22, 2024

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday authorized a new antibody to protect immunocompromised individuals against Covid-19.    The drug, known as Pemgarda and marketed by the biotech Invivyd, is the first such drug to become available since the agency pulled AstraZeneca’s Evusheld off the market in January 2023.

Immunity 363

Immunity Immunization Drug Development 363

STAT

MARCH 21, 2024

This “summer of discovery,” as McKenna called it, brought him back to the immune system. McKenna discussed possibilities with his teenagers and Prometheus’ chief scientific officer.

Immunity 229

Immunity Immunization 229

STAT

OCTOBER 23, 2023

The risks of severe neonatal morbidity, neonatal death, and admission to the neonatal intensive care unit were all significantly lower during the first month of birth in infants whose mothers were vaccinated against Covid-19, and protection against the virus continued for up to six months after birth, according to a new study published Monday in JAMA (..)

Vaccines 360

Vaccines Immunity Immunization 360

STAT

MAY 21, 2024

Checkpoint inhibitors, drugs that unleash the immune system, have turned into blockbuster therapies that have transformed outcomes for some patients with deadly cancers.

Immunity 209

Immunity Immunization Drug Development 209

STAT

MAY 10, 2023

Prior research has shown that people with obesity have deficiencies in their “natural killer” cells, or NK cells — immune cells that help in combating cancer. A new small study suggests they may also be useful in fighting cancer.

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Immunity Immunization Diabetes 237

STAT

APRIL 11, 2023

No two people have quite the same immune system. And while that fact can make matching bone marrow and organ transplants torturously difficult, a Bay Area biotech believes it can harness immune diversity to treat a range of deadly cancers.

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Immunity Immunization 192

STAT

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

Alison Sbrana was in the belly of an opera when her life changed. Down in the pit, surrounded by fellow orchestra members, she’d been straining to play her flute for half the show. As performers overhead enveloped the audience in arias, Sbrana felt like the Hulk was pulling on the tendons in the right side of her neck.

Immunity 363

Immunity Immunization 363

STAT

OCTOBER 25, 2023

Alison Buttenheim was floored by a sign she saw in her doctor’s office when she went to get the first jab of the two-dose shingles vaccine to protect her against painful flare-ups of varicella zoster. “Medicare patients cannot receive Tdap or zoster vaccines here. They need to obtain [them] at their pharmacy.

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Vaccines Immunity Immunization 363

PharmaVoice

SEPTEMBER 11, 2023

After dropping its neuroscience program earlier this year, the clinical-stage oncology company is doubling down on a candidate targeting the MAPK pathway.

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Immunity Immunization 246

STAT

OCTOBER 25, 2022

That’s the premise behind Normunity, which launched Tuesday with $65 million from investors to develop a suite of drugs that it dubs “immune normalizers” to help restore the natural ability of the immune system’s T cells to infiltrate and destroy tumors.

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Immunity Immunization 185

STAT

JANUARY 24, 2024

This happens to people whose immune systems are compromised, whether through disease or treatment, leaving them vulnerable to infections that last weeks, months, or, in one known case, a year.

Immunization 355

Immunization Immunity 355

STAT

OCTOBER 10, 2023

LONDON — In this case, it was neither the chicken nor the egg that came first. Rather, it started with some specially engineered cells in a lab. The chicken cells had had their genomes edited, not to correct a faulty mutation, but in an effort to blunt the bird flu virus.

Immunity 293

Immunity Immunization 293

STAT

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

There’s symptom management, hopeful periods of remission often followed by relapses, but rarely a lasting fix for the way their immune system attacks healthy cells. If the immune system is an army, then those with conditions like lupus, multiple sclerosis, or rheumatoid arthritis are often fighting a never-ending war of friendly fire.

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Immunization Immunity 356

PharmaVoice

JULY 14, 2022

The company’s chief medical officer discusses its lead candidate and how it fits into wider oncology trends.

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Immunity Immunization 264

STAT

AUGUST 16, 2024

Pfizer and BioNTech said Friday that their combined mRNA vaccine candidate against influenza and Covid-19 showed a lower immune response against one type of influenza, influenza B, in a Phase 3 trial, a setback for the vaccine. ” Continue to STAT+ to read the full story…

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Vaccines Immunity Immunization 313

STAT

MARCH 27, 2024

New research shows that certain bacteria can alter antibodies so much that they’re unrecognizable to the body’s defenses — potentially leading to immune friendly fire. The bacteria, called Akkermansia muciniphila, can strip the sugar coating from IgA antibodies, immune proteins abundant in the gut.

Immunization 327

Immunization Immunity 327

STAT

AUGUST 21, 2023

The Food and Drug Administration on Monday approved a Pfizer vaccine that aims to protect newborns against RSV by vaccinating pregnant people in the latter part of pregnancy. The vaccine, Abrysvo, has also been approved for use in adults 60 and older to protect them against respiratory syncytial virus. Read the rest…

Vaccines 246

Vaccines Immunity Immunization 246

STAT

SEPTEMBER 16, 2022

Rheumatology — the study of immune-system-driven diseases of the bones, joints, muscles, and in-betweens — has inherited plenty of hand-me-downs from cancer research. For example, there are ways of squelching an immune system in order to shrink certain kinds of cancerous tumors.

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Immunity Immunization 317

Pharma Times

MAY 2, 2024

Bacteroides fragilis in the gut improves immunity and immunotherapy treatment responses

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Immunity Immunization 117

STAT

JUNE 27, 2024

Supreme Court rejected a controversial bankruptcy deal in which the owners of Purdue Pharma sought to contribute up to $6 billion in exchange for immunity from further lawsuits. The immunity had been a huge sticking point and prevented the settlement, which was first approved by a bankruptcy judge three years ago, from being finalized.

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Immunity Immunization 343

STAT

OCTOBER 19, 2022

The phrase “Black Death mass burial site” tends to evoke images of haphazard piles of diseased deceased like the “bring out your dead” Monty Python scene.

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Immunity Immunization 250

Pharma Times

MAY 30, 2024

Affecting the immune system, various forms of SCID are estimated to affect one in 75,000 to 100,000 newborns

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Immunity Immunization Hospitals 116

STAT

APRIL 4, 2024

Many of the effects of climate change play out at a very large scale: Heatwaves that grip entire continents. Flooding that submerges vast swaths of island nations and continental coastal areas. Other effects are far less visible because they’re taking place inside people’s bodies. That doesn’t make them any less dangerous.

Immunity 253

Immunity Immunization 253

STAT

NOVEMBER 24, 2022

An experimental influenza vaccine developed using messenger RNA technology appears capable of inducing what should be a protective immune response against all known subtypes of flu, at least in animals. If the work is translated into humans it could turn out to be a version of a long-sought universal vaccine.

Vaccines 312

Vaccines Immunity Immunization Hospitals 312

STAT

SEPTEMBER 8, 2024

The rationale for that urgency is this: An unexplained H5 infection raises the possibility of person-to-person spread of a flu virus that has never before circulated in humans, and to which people would not have immunity. And this with a dangerous flu virus that scientists have long feared could someday trigger a pandemic.

Immunity 363

Immunity Immunization 363

STAT

MAY 8, 2024

Tolerance is the holy grail in calming autoimmune disease, a truce in the immune system’s faulty battle against the body’s own fabric. In type 1 diabetes, immune fighters attack beta cells in the pancreas that produce insulin, the hormone that controls glucose levels in the blood.

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Diabetes Immunity Immunization 264

STAT

JANUARY 21, 2024

LONDON — Starting Monday, a new, highly effective malaria vaccine will be rolled out for the first time, as an immunization campaign for children kicks off in Cameroon — a day that global health officials say marked a historic step in the decades-long quest to protect people from one of the world’s deadliest infections.

Vaccines 362

Vaccines Immunity Immunization 362

STAT

OCTOBER 29, 2024

But many other modes of immunotherapy for cancer were approved first — checkpoint blockade drugs like Keytruda and engineered immune cell therapies like Yescarta. Cancer vaccines may also be able to help train the immune system to recognize and kill cancers related to viruses like HPV.

Vaccines 355

Vaccines Immunity Immunization Drug Development 355

STAT

OCTOBER 14, 2024

Companies that are developing new medicines for autoimmune conditions, as well as other immune system disorders, have brought in more money and closed more deals so far this year than most other areas, including the cardiometabolic field, data from investment bank Oppenheimer show.

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Immunity Immunization Drug Development 301

STAT

MARCH 27, 2024

A new study out of Germany gives it a shot, offering up three MS subtypes based on immune markers found in patients’ blood — each group with slightly different disease progression. Read the rest…

Immunity 338

Immunity Immunization 338

STAT

FEBRUARY 1, 2024

Now a new study in mice suggests a key part of the answer may be that an RNA molecule that’s indispensable for female survival steers the body toward immune friendly fire. Researchers have long known that women are more likely to develop autoimmune disorders than men, though they’ve struggled to fully understand why.

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Immunity Immunization 340

STAT

FEBRUARY 29, 2024

At a meeting Thursday of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, vaccine safety experts from the two agencies presented data that showed what appears to be an elevated rate of GBS, as the condition is called, among people who got the Pfizer vaccine, although there were also cases detected among people who got the GSK product.

Vaccines 337

Vaccines Immunity Immunization 337

STAT

MAY 5, 2023

Early hypotheses as to what was driving the heart inflammation, called myocarditis , included an allergic response to the vaccine, vaccine-induced antibodies, or an autoimmune response in which the immune system attacks the body’s own healthy tissue by mistake.

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Vaccines Immunity Immunization 352