Susan Bernstein | Issue: February 2018 |
Every so often, a major scientific breakthrough profoundly alters the trajectory of scientific research. In the 1960s, microbiologists sparked the recombinant-DNA revolution with the discovery that bacteria have innate immune systems based on restriction enzymes. These enzymes bind and cut invading viral genomes at specific short sequences, and scientists rapidly repurposed them to cut and…
New studies examine why turning on or off switches in genes that control the genome can contribute to pathogenesis of such autoimmune diseases as systemic lupus erythematosus or rheumatoid arthritis
What do these studies tell us about disease mechanisms in lupus?
CHICAGO—During the 2017 annual Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies (FOCIS) meeting, a session focused on precision immunology and its advances. Precision immunology describes the identification of host, immune system and tumor factors that can be used to select an immunotherapy approach. Thus, the first step in precision immunology is to identify soluble factors, immune cell…