Cell Therapy Could Be a New Drug for Infectious Diseases
This article is part of our series: Cell therapy is not just for curing cancer, but for combating many infectious diseases. Also, it may have applications in preventing deadly infectious diseases.
Cell transplantation has been used for more than 30 years for treating disease states. It is now coming to be a research tool to discover novel drugs.
Researchers are working with stem cells to try to develop novel drugs.
For example, a team led by Thomas J. Schenke, MD, of the University of California, San Francisco, is developing a stem cell transplant therapy for patients infected with the West Nile virus.
The idea is to use stem cells that can be extracted from the blood of infected patients to treat the virus. In the clinical trial, researchers have infused stem cells into patients with the virus, which causes the body to produce the virus or its components. The hope is to help infected patients to clear their virus.
“We have found that this treatment has a strong clinical impact on patients with a milder form of the infection that is less well controlled by other therapies,” said the study’s principal investigator, Scott L. Burden, MD, of the National Institutes of Health, in a statement.
However, the clinical trial to date has not yet reached its end goal. The goal is to continue the experiments so that this approach could later be evaluated in a phase 3 clinical trial.
The team was able to grow a human stem cell line that could be used in a bioreactor. They then transplanted it into mice. The cell transplant is intended to be a long-term therapy, and the team is trying to extend it to include animals.
The researchers found that the infected human stem cell line treated with their virus contained “good” stem cells that are healthy and are not harmful to the mice. However, they were not certain that the transplanted stem cells had actually been “good” stem cells. That is, they did not know if they were able to improve the immune system of the mice through the body’s own immune system — the human cells had improved in the lab.
This research is important. It is important for the body to have good stem cells.
Reducing antiviral treatment may boost the immune function of recipients of stem cell transplants.
The human immune system is one of the very few systems in the human body to have its own specific receptors. These receptors are found on lymphocytes (also called immune cells) and are specific to viruses. Once these receptors are exposed to an infectious agent, which is found inside the body, it then activates the system that is exposed. Once this activation has occurred, the immune system starts to fight the infectious agent. When the host body is exposed to the infectious agent, the inflammatory process would start to be triggered. This inflammation is actually a response to the infection, but it is a response that the immune system would have. However, there are viruses that are not going to trigger that inflammatory process. As mentioned above, immune response is not the same for both healthy and virus infected individuals. We have seen that antiviral drugs can help to the antiviral drugs not affecting the immune system. Therefore, the viruses that cause autoimmune diseases in virus infected individuals need to be targeted as much as possible, which is why the human immune system must be protected. Furthermore, to get infected through the virus infection, the body, in order to not become infected, needs the lymphocytes and their receptors to be exposed to the infectious agent, which would be viral. In conclusion, this research paper focuses on the relationship between antiretroviral drug use and the immune response of the recipient. It states and analyzes the evidence that antiviral treatment can boost the immune system of the recipient and therefore they can reduce the risk of becoming infected through the virus infection. Furthermore, this research paper states that antiviral drugs are effective against infection of the virus. According to the author, it would not be appropriate to treat the virus infected individuals with antiviral drugs. The conclusion of the research paper states that, according to available evidence, the antiviral drug is not advisable for the treatment of the virus infected individuals. This paper, however, is very important because it will help prevent the development of a new virus infection within the human beings, and therefore help decrease their risks. This research paper also points out that, the current approach on the use of antiviral drugs is not able to prevent the viral infection.
Immune responses of patients to CMV-mediated reactivation 365 days after transplantation
CMV is an ubiquitous herpes virus that infects 80–90% of the human population. The virus can cause disease in children by reactivation (persistent infection) or by reactivation into the airways, causing pneumonitis in the immunocompromised (IC). CMV-associated disease is more common during acute CMV (ACMV) infection, and patients can survive for many years without a solid organ or bone marrow transplant (SOTBx). The clinical consequences of disseminated CMV infection in these individuals include blindness, blindness due to opportunistic infections, mental retardation, and, in rare cases, cancer. In patients with SOTBx, there is an increased risk of developing CMV-related blindness, pneumonitis and/or CMV infection, which presents as retinitis in up to 50% of patients with SOTBx.
Although ACMV is the most common cause of CMV-related infection, infection with other viruses also can occur in SOTBx patients. This has been demonstrated experimentally, with the possibility that CMV reactivation is due to reactivation of other viruses. There is a report of CMV reactivation in patients with SOTBx, but this has not been evaluated by modern virology techniques. CMV-driven immune responses against the virus have been reported to persist in organ transplant recipients for several years after transplantation^\[[@CIT0001]\]^ and studies in this patient population have suggested that CMV reactivation is not uncommon.
Several groups have shown that CMV is present on the apolipoprotein B-containing lipoprotein particle ( called CMV antigen, or CMV-Ag). However, CMV infection may not be the sole cause of lung disease, and the immune responses elicited in SOTBx are capable of controlling CMV, in some cases at lower levels than in the presence of ACMV.
Low-level viral infection promotes protective antigen-specific T cells of cytomegalovirus after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation.
This paper compares the immune reactions to allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (Allo-HCT) in patients with low-level viro-immunity, versus other cytomegalovirus (CMV) patients. CMV patients exhibit a unique pattern of immune events. Low-level viro-immunity patients develop CD8+ cytotoxic T cells (CTLs) to cytomegalovirus antigen and produce a wide range of cytokines induced by CMV infection. In addition, these low-level viro-immunity patients have a high frequency of CD4-expressing T cells producing MCP-1, which is involved in viral clearance. The low-level viro-immunity patients have few T cells recognizing donor-derived viral antigen and this is associated with a reduced incidence of CMV-related disease. We propose that this reduced risk is due to the generation of a protective antigen-specific (PA-specific) cytotoxic T cell response. This PA-specific T cell response can be divided into three distinct mechanisms: 1) induction of an antigen-dependent (and not antigen-specific, as previously thought) cytotoxic T cell response; 2) induction of a non-antigen-dependent (and not PA-specific) cytotoxic T cell response; and 3) induction of an antigen-specific cytotoxic T cell response. This hypothesis was tested in a group of CMV low-level viro-immunity patients before and after allo-HCT. Patients with moderate or severe viral infection were identified by the low level of viral antigen immunoglobulin G titers (IgG vIg). Low viral-IgG-levels were associated with higher CD8+ T-cell counts in the peripheral blood, higher serum IgG, IgA, IgM, and IgE levels and lower CMV-RNA copy number in the donor peripheral blood. In a cross-sectional analysis the median (interquartile range [IQR]) number of CD8+ T cells were 2. 8) before transplantation, 6.
Tips of the Day in Antivirus & Malware
We are aware of a malware that was recently discovered that would attempt to install itself into your computer with the purpose of collecting personal data of any individual who visits that website, as well as any other website that is hosted on the infected computer. This also includes any email senders of any kind.
Bitwizard is a new, yet very old, malware that was initially discovered by a user of the Windows Malwarebytes toolkit. The malware was found to perform extremely malicious and destructive functionality involving various malware/malware techniques, such as hijacking your computer to display pornographic images or automatically infecting your computer with viruses that allow the virus-infected computer to open and run legitimate executable files that are designed to steal and access confidential or personal data.
1- It can be installed into a website’s main page or the ‘www’ address, as well as a special file folder location.
2- It can be installed into a PDF file.
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Spread the loveThis article is part of our series: Cell therapy is not just for curing cancer, but for combating many infectious diseases. Also, it may have applications in preventing deadly infectious diseases. Cell transplantation has been used for more than 30 years for treating disease states. It is now coming to be a research…