AUTOIMMUNITY

There are moments during every physician’s day when she or he gives medical advice based on well-established evidence– “The data show that starting medication A for this disease will reduce the risk of death by 20%.”   There are also moments when...

"Innate Immunity in Systemic Sclerosis - Role of Toll-Like Receptors, Interferon, and the Potential Impact of Vitamin D" *Ruxandra Ionescu,1 Laura Groseanu2 ...

A team of researchers at Yale, University of California, San Francisco, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have identified the specific genetic variations that cause 21 autoimmune diseases.

Highlights

•Tertiary lymphoid structures (TLS) are common at sites of chronic inflammation.•TLS shape local adaptive immune responses in inflamed and tumoral tissues.•TLS represent prognostic biomarkers and therapeutic targets in cancer.

Tertiary lymphoid structures (TLS) are ectopic lymphoid formations found in inflamed, infected, or tumoral tissues. They exhibit all the characteristics of structures in the lymph nodes (LN) associated with the generation of an adaptive immune response, including a T cell zone with mature dendritic cells (DC), a germinal center with follicular dendritic cells (FDC) and proliferating B cells, and high endothelial venules (HEV). In this review, we discuss evidence for the roles of TLS in chronic infection, autoimmunity, and cancer, and address the question of whether TLS present beneficial or deleterious effects in these contexts. We examine the relationship between TLS in tumors and patient prognosis, and discuss the potential role of TLS in building and/or maintaining local immune responses and how this understanding may guide therapeutic interventions.

UCI BioSci M121: Immunology with Hematology (Fall 2013) Lec 25. Immunology with Hematology -- Autoimmune Diseases: Vaccines -- View the complete course: http...