Immunomedicine最新文献

The development and FDA approval of immune checkpoint blocking antibodies have brought new light to cancer immunotherapy. While immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) has demonstrated clinical benefit in certain tumors as monotherapy, effective therapy of established tumors necessitates a combination of multiple immuno-oncology agents targeting diverse functions of the immune system. These combination strategies should be tactically designed to Engage the immune system by inducing a tumor-antigen specific T-cell population, Expand the number of antigen-specific cytotoxic T cells and increase their migration to the tumor microenvironment, and once there, Enable prolonged and persistent effector function. Although viral therapeutic cancer vaccines have demonstrated little efficacy as monotherapies, they have substantial potential to Engage the immune system as one branch of a multipronged treatment strategy. This review will summarize prior and ongoing Phase II and III clinical trials built upon the foundation of viral therapeutic cancer vaccines. We examine their efficacy as a monotherapy, and more importantly, when combined with additional agents that Expand and Enable the immune system. It is clear that the future of cancer immunotherapy will include evolving treatment strategies made up of multiple agents, and we are optimistic that in this context viral therapeutic cancer vaccines will emerge as an important part of next generation effective therapeutic strategies.

On December 6, 2019, the Eighth Annual Bone Marrow Transplant (BMT) and Cell Therapy Workshop was convened in Orlando, Florida. The workshop was a satellite meeting held prior to the American Association of Hematology annual conference and was attended by 200 physicians and scientists with clinical and research interests in bone marrow transplantation and cell therapy. The unique format consisted of 5-minute presentations of unpublished research followed by 5 minutes of audience questions and discussion. Basic and translational science was reported, not driven by commercial interests but by a desire to understand basic mechanisms in immunology. This meeting report describes the unique nature of the symposium as not sales focused but science driven, and briefly summarizes not only the key proceedings but also their value to the scientific community at large.

Welcome to ImmunoMedicine, an open-access, peer-reviewed, online journal whose mission is to disseminate high-impact, cross-disciplinary discoveries translating immunology into medicine. It matters where scientists and clinicians publish their best research. Allow ImmunoMedicine to be your conduit to this exciting world of translational research.

Why another online journal? The niche for ImmunoMedicine is the space where ideas from different currents meet, creating a new intellectual stream. The motivation for this journal is best captured by a recent experience I had attending the Akira Arimura Memorial Symposium on vasoactive intestinal polypeptide/pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide (VIP/PACAP) and related peptides at UCLA in early November 2019. Dr. Arimura discovered PACAP 30 years ago after purifying peptides after processing the hypothalami from the brains of 130 000 pigs. He identified the PACAP peptide from column fractions using a bioassay that involved measuring lutenization of oocytes in rats. Beyond the herculean task of peptide purification and identification, Dr. Arimura launched the field of studying vasoactive neuropeptides that is cross-disciplinary due to the pleiotropic effects of PACAP and the related VIP on behavior, autonomic functions, and adaptive and innate immunity.

I foresee a similar role for ImmumoMedicine, catalyzing a discourse on the intersection of immunology with the pathophysiology of disease and the maintenance of health and homeostasis. I envision ImmunoMedicine to be the online version of a transdisciplinary symposium, highlighting new discoveries in immunology and showing how the basic science knowledge can be translated to explain and affect diverse processes in medicine. The target audience is students, trainees, and faculty in immunology, oncology, hematology, regenerative medicine, cardiology, neurology, rheumatology, or any of the multitude of clinical or basic science specialties that intersect with immunology. We welcome our colleagues from the pharmaceutical industry who are eager to identify new targets for drug development or understand how existing drugs affect immune responses. We invite anyone with an interest in discovering and unraveling the intricacies of immunity and its intersection with medicine.

We have assembled an outstanding group of associate editors and an editorial board with the expertise and commitment to provide every ImmunoMedicine submission with rapid, high-quality editorial evaluation, external peer review and, where warranted, actionable critiques for revision and publication. ImmunoMedicine has high standards for scientific originality and impact in the field, which is to the benefit of authors and readers alike. Our author guidelines offer detailed information regarding article types and submission requirements. The online submission process at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/imed is straightfo

I wake from uncomfortable sleep at around 03:30—my new normal. The heat has not come on yet and this December's Full Cold Moon already promises another dreary dank mid-Atlantic winter day. After my “Rise to the pain?” internal debate, I succumb—horizontal isn't much better than vertical at this time of day. I leverage myself out of bed, wince, robe, and edge downstairs on unsteady feet. My morning leg and knee pain symptoms have flared again, 25 mg of prednisone per day notwithstanding. With a pain level 3-4 out of 10, it is certainly bearable, but it’s all wrong. I curse. Clearly my lowest effective dose has not yet been achieved, something I’ve known for over a week but which has not been appreciated by my rheumatologist. I medicate, eat breakfast, feed the cat, wake the iMac, hit play on Music… to hear Billy Joel sing about his friend John in the piano bar and that “someplace that he’d rather be.”

Yes indeed, I can think of a number of someplaces I’d rather be, healthy someplaces at that. Instead, my present choices are of either taking prednisone daily for the foreseeable future or pulling a cart of pain up a muddy winding road in the pouring rain, slogging through, yoked to this poorly understood polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR) for however-many months or years. This is my new normal.

Polymyalgia rheumatica is a chronic, extremely painful, autoimmune disorder primarily involving severe muscle pain the shoulders, hips and major joints. It affects about 0.1% of the over-50 population. More frequent in women than men, it targets most often those above age 60, with an average age at diagnosis of 70. I’m not at risk of death from it—as long as I don’t also develop giant cell arteritis, PMR’s dangerous cousin. But I sure have been suffering greatly. I am middle-aged and was otherwise healthy. At the time of this writing, my own tretcherous PMR journey had only lasted for about 3 months and it had been 1 month since the official diagnosis. Most patients suffer for at least 1-2 years, and some for 5 or 8 years or more, during what should be their joyful golden years. And with no known cure, the primary treatment is symptom management with the Devil’s Tic Tacs: prednisone, doled out in generous milligrams, with goals of future tapering to a lower, more manageable dose.

Patients approach PMR with confusion and uncertainty and dread. It is so elusive to us in part because it is so elusive to our physicians and caregivers. Fellow patients describe stories of suffering with debilitating pain—joint-freezing, freedom-crippling pain—for months or years without a proper diagnosis or treatment. While many patients I know receive sound medical care, stories come up frequently of ignorant general practitioners and rheumatologists, well-meaning but undereducated clinicians simply throwing corticosteroids and NSAIDs and opioid pain killers at the symptoms, but offering neither sufficient information nor warning about possible drug