Guardian Healthcare Innovation Awards ceremony - in pictures

Richard Stubbs, head of commercial and international innovation at NHS England addresses the audience at the innovation awards. Photograph: Anna Gordon

View the original article here

Clearest ever pictures of immune cells could help treat cancers and HIV

Featured Article
Main Category: Immune System / Vaccines
Also Included In: Cancer / Oncology;  HIV / AIDS
Article Date: 25 Jul 2013 - 0:00 PDT Current ratings for:
Clearest ever pictures of immune cells could help treat cancers and HIV

Immunity has never looked so good. Scientists in the UK recently released images that provide the clearest snapshot of how white blood immune cells attack viral infections and tumors. They are hopeful that these clearer pictures will provide important insights into how diseases can be treated.

White blood cells are the fighters of the body, tackling infections and cancers on our behalf. But when a research team from the University of Manchester used an improved process to view them, the images revealed how the cells change the way their surface molecules are arranged when a protein involved with cancers and viruses is activated.

And the images are something akin to science fiction. The proteins at the surface of the immune cells do not appear to be evenly distributed, but rather, they cluster, producing an image that resembles stars in a galaxy.

Professor Daniel Davis, director of research at the Manchester Collaborative Centre for Inflammation Research (MCCIR), told Medical News Today that before their breakthrough, normal light microscopes were limited in the images they produced because of the way light travels by bending around obstacles. The new microscopes he and his team used were able to employ computer technology and optics to break that barrier.

The image produced by scientists shows, for the first time, the cluster patterns of proteins on the surface of white blood immune cells. Source: MCCIR

They used super-resolution fluorescence microscopy in order to view the immune cells in their lab, and their results were recently published in Science Signalling.

By studying how the proteins change on immune cell surfaces at a nano scale, Davis and his team are able to gain a better understanding of how our immune systems work. He notes that this could give them ideas for how to develop disease-fighting drugs in the future. He told MNT:

"Rather than study one specific disease here, we investigated how immune cells respond to a particular protein that is found on many types of cancer cells or virus-infected cells. This protein is not found on the surface of normal healthy cells, but when a cell becomes cancerous or gets infected with some types of viruses, this protein gets put up on the surface for immune cells to see that there is a problem."

Davis added that these new imaging improvements are leading to unanticipated medical discoveries. For example, he and his team recently discovered new aspects of how HIV "uses membrane nanotubes to spread."

Though he notes that the road between where they are now with research and where they hope to arrive with new medicine is quite long, he's hopeful about where they're heading.

"We are, for example, trying to apply this new imaging technology to look at human lung samples with a view to understanding respiratory infections, asthma and so on," he said.

We may need to wait for new medicines to be developed as a result of the new images, but we can now marvel at the pictures Davis and his team have produced.

Written by Marie Ellis

Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today Visit our immune system / vaccines section for the latest news on this subject. Please use one of the following formats to cite this article in your essay, paper or report:

MLA

Ellis, Marie. "Clearest ever pictures of immune cells could help treat cancers and HIV." Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intl., 25 Jul. 2013. Web.
26 Jul. 2013. APA

Please note: If no author information is provided, the source is cited instead.

'Clearest ever pictures of immune cells could help treat cancers and HIV'

Please note that we publish your name, but we do not publish your email address. It is only used to let you know when your message is published. We do not use it for any other purpose. Please see our privacy policy for more information.

If you write about specific medications or operations, please do not name health care professionals by name.

All opinions are moderated before being included (to stop spam). We reserve the right to amend opinions where we deem necessary.

Contact Our News Editors

For any corrections of factual information, or to contact the editors please use our feedback form.

Please send any medical news or health news press releases to:

Note: Any medical information published on this website is not intended as a substitute for informed medical advice and you should not take any action before consulting with a health care professional. For more information, please read our terms and conditions.

View the original article here

Researchers reveal the clearest new pictures of immune cells

Main Category: Immune System / Vaccines
Article Date: 24 Jul 2013 - 14:00 PDT Current ratings for:
Researchers reveal the clearest new pictures of immune cells

Scientists from The University of Manchester have revealed new images which provide the clearest picture yet of how white blood immune cells attack viral infections and tumours.

They show how the cells, which are responsible for fighting infections and cancer in the human body, change the organisation of their surface molecules, when activated by a type of protein found on viral-infected or tumour cells.

Professor Daniel Davis, who has been leading the investigation into the immune cells, known as natural killers, said the work could provide important clues for tackling disease.

The research reveals the proteins at the surface of immune cells are not evenly spaced but grouped in clusters - a bit like stars bunched together in galaxies.

Professor Davis, Director of Research at the Manchester Collaborative Centre for Inflammation Research (MCCIR), a partnership between the University and two pharmaceutical companies GlaxoSmithKline and Astra Zeneca, said: "This is the first time scientists have looked at how these immune cells work at such a high resolution. The surprising thing was that these new pictures revealed that immune cell surfaces alter at this scale - the nano scale - which could perhaps change their ability to be activated in a subsequent encounter with a diseased cell.

"We have shown that immune cells are not evenly distributed as once thought, but instead they are grouped in very small clumps - a bit like if you were an astronomer looking at clusters of stars in the Universe and you would notice that they were grouped in clusters.

"We studied how these clusters or proteins change when the immune cells are switched on - to kill diseased cells. Looking at our cells in this much detail gives us a greater understanding about how the immune system works and could provide useful clues for developing drugs to target disease in the future."

Until now the limitations of light microscopy have prevented a clear understanding of how immune cells detect other cells as being diseased or healthy.

The team used high quality, super-resolution fluorescence microscopy to view the cells in blood samples in their laboratory to create the still images published in the journal Science Signalling this week.

Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release. Click 'references' tab above for source.
Visit our immune system / vaccines section for the latest news on this subject.

The research is published in the journal Science Signalling this week.

Manchester University

Please use one of the following formats to cite this article in your essay, paper or report:

MLA

University, Manchester. "Researchers reveal the clearest new pictures of immune cells." Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intl., 24 Jul. 2013. Web.
26 Jul. 2013. APA

Please note: If no author information is provided, the source is cited instead.

'Researchers reveal the clearest new pictures of immune cells'

Please note that we publish your name, but we do not publish your email address. It is only used to let you know when your message is published. We do not use it for any other purpose. Please see our privacy policy for more information.

If you write about specific medications or operations, please do not name health care professionals by name.

All opinions are moderated before being included (to stop spam). We reserve the right to amend opinions where we deem necessary.

Contact Our News Editors

For any corrections of factual information, or to contact the editors please use our feedback form.

Please send any medical news or health news press releases to:

Note: Any medical information published on this website is not intended as a substitute for informed medical advice and you should not take any action before consulting with a health care professional. For more information, please read our terms and conditions.

View the original article here