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If new treatments for immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (IMIDs) are to emerge, then a radical new approach that moves the field from one that is based on clinical signs and symptoms to one that is based on immunological and molecular mechanisms is urgently needed. This requires a new way of thinking: that IMIDs should be approached as having shared common pathogenic cells and pathways, and that therapies should be targeted at these cells and processes rather than clinical features.
High-dimensional cytometry experiments measuring 20–50 cellular markers have become routine in many laboratories. The increased complexity of these datasets requires added rigor during the experimental planning and the subsequent manual and computational data analysis to avoid artefacts and misinterpretation of results. Here we discuss pitfalls frequently encountered during high-dimensional cytometry data analysis and aim to provide a basic framework and recommendations for reporting and analyzing these datasets.
One year into the COVID-19 pandemic, governments and health agencies are hyperfocused on mitigation efforts such as masking and physical distancing, as well as vaccine logistics—as they should be. But they continue to ignore, much to everyone’s peril, a parallel, ever-worsening public health crisis: the damage done by the spread of medical mis- and disinformation online.
Ulrich von Andrian recounts how an unexpected experimental result called into question a well-established concept in immunology: the mechanism of immune memory. Follow-up experiments revealed that NK cells can mediate antigen-specific adaptive immune responses.
New Zealand has avoided the major health impacts of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic due to a strict country-wide lockdown, the end-goal of which was elimination rather than mitigation and suppression. The New Zealand government’s use of scientific expertise, spanning public health, infectious diseases, genomics, modeling and immunology, has been one of the keys to the success of its SARS-CoV-2 elimination and control strategy.
From the onset of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and following the creation of the ‘Coronavirus Unit’, Argentinean scientists and technologists have contributed by leading basic and translational research initiatives, including developing diagnostic and serological kits, designing new therapeutic approaches, establishing epidemiological platforms, executing clinical trials and implementing social measures to protect the most vulnerable groups of the population.
