Pioneers of RNA Medicine: The Collaborative Journey of Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman The entire world benefited from their research in 2020. Despite facing skepticism, their collaborative efforts led to groundbreaking discoveries in RNA biology and immunology. They jointly received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2023.

Biologics are drugs derived from complex molecules like antibodies. Over the last two decades they have re-emerged as…

In recent years, immunology…

Neurodegenerative diseases affect millions worldwide. Fifty million people are living with Alzheimer’s disease or other dementias. Although Alzheimer’s disease is one of the most recognized, it is just one of many neurological disorders, such as Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson’s, or Huntington’s disease. These conditions lead to a…

Understanding the interactions between drugs and biological systems is critical for the success of a new drug. One key tool in this process is functional assays. Functional assays are customized assays that evaluate the impact of drugs on the functionality of cells. They test for a drug’s specific biological mechanism…

Many flow cytometry users are happy to start an experiment with a general protocol and a question about their specimen -- Will my cells make more cytokines or express more markers after activation? Will my cells respond to a novel immunotherapeutic drug candidate?

Introduction of CAR-T Therapy T lymphocytes are engineered with synthetic receptors known as chimeric antigen receptors (CAR) in CAR-T Cell therapy. The CAR-T cell is an effector T cell that recognizes and eliminates specific cancer cells, independent of major histocompatibility complex molecules. (Zhai et al. 2018). Chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) cells have recombinant receptor constructs expressed in T cells to target cells expressing specific antigens.

Memory is a characteristic of the immune system that provides humans and other vertebrates with long term protection against infectious diseases and other “non-self” antigens such as those associated with tumor cells. In the context of T cells, memory responses occur when a naïve T cell encounters an antigen bound to a major histocompatibility complex molecule and is activated to undergo differentiation into an effector cell or a memory cell. Memory T cell populations can persist in the body for months to years and can be stimulated to respond specifically and rapidly to a foreign antigen upon re-exposure.

Flow cytometry is a powerful technique for characterizing immune responses to vaccines, immunotherapeutic drugs, and other clinical interventions. But many preclinical and clinical studies may take place at sites that are not in the same location as the flow cytometry lab. That’s why it’s critical to determine how clinical specimens should be collected, processed, stored, and shipped to assure that cells will be viable and abundant enough for flow cytometry analysis.

There is no question that the discovery of vaccines spearheaded the path of modern medicine and in so doing, eradicated at least two diseases, smallpox, and rinderpest from the global population. Today’s modern vaccines are being developed not only to tackle infectious diseases but also for the treatment and prevention of autoimmune diseases and cancers. Whereas vaccines for infectious diseases and cancer are designed to provoke a specific Th 1-driven immune response to target and reject the tumor or pathogen, vaccines driving Th 2 responses appear to be the best at targeting autoimmune diseases. Understanding the driving factors behind these underlying responses is central to the development of safe and effective vaccines, and flow cytometry provides unprecedented clarity on how the immune system responds to different vaccine strategies.