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The use of antibodies as therapeutic agents is a big business, with 18 now approved for use in the United States. How they are generated and optimized to increase efficacy and safety is the focus of extensive research efforts, which are reviewed here.
Statins are best known as cholesterol-lowering drugs but increasing evidence indicates that they might be an effective treatment for autoimmune disease. Their ability to inhibit post-translational protein prenylation could be key to their immunomodulatory effects.
With the search for an HIV vaccine still ongoing, attention is turning towards developing topical prevention strategies that prevent HIV transmission. This Review describes the rationale behind the choice of targets for such strategies and how their clinical development is progressing.
This Review discusses recent studies that have identified ways to increase the antitumour response of autologous tumour-reactive cells adoptively transferred to individuals with cancer, such as the use of lymphodepleting regimens before adoptive cell transfer.
Clinical trials of reagents that target B cells in individuals with autoimmune disease, in particular rheumatoid arthritis, have yielded highly promising results. Might such an approach bring us closer to the goal of re-establishing immune tolerance in these individuals?
Although the discontinuation of a clinical trial of amyloid-β vaccination of subjects with Alzheimer's disease led us to reassess the use of immune-based therapy for this disease, subsequent work involving antibody and cell-based therapies looks promising.
How does a T-cell response to viral infection inform us of the state of the disease? Patterns of cytokine production by T cells could hold the key and might be useful markers for monitoring virus-associated disease in the clinic.
Immunology is one of the few disciplines that straddle both basic sciences and applied medicine, and translating what we observe in the laboratory to the clinic is an increasingly important goal for many immunologists. This Focus highlights how basic research findings are being translated and applied to the treatment of cancer, and autoimmune and infectious diseases.