Retraining macrophages to kill tumors

Retraining macrophages to kill tumors

Lipids heading toward lysosomes that carry a mutated ion channel are spared from destruction, according to Meidel et al. (page 1477). The accumulating undigested fat eventually dooms the cell. Cells get rid of excess fat, which comes from worn-out organelles or engulfed pathogens by, for instance, shuttling them in endosomes to degradative lysosomes. The two organelles are thought to fuse when ...

IFNγ: Issuing macrophages a license to kill

T cells tell macrophages when to start making the toxic soup of lysosomal enzymes, reactive oxygen species, and nitric oxide that destroys intracellular pathogens. In 1983, Carl Nathan proved that this start signal comes in the form of the secreted cytokine IFNgamma.

Lactoferricin Peptides Increase Macrophages' Capacity To Kill Mycobacterium avium

Mycobacterial infections cause a significant burden of disease and death worldwide. Their treatment is long, toxic, costly, and increasingly prone to failure due to bacterial resistance to currently available antibiotics. New therapeutic options are thus clearly needed. Antimicrobial peptides represent an important source of new antimicrobial molecules, both for their direct activity and for th...

Intracellular Virulent ATP Stimulates Human Macrophages to Kill

Does killing adipocytes kill the bad macrophages?

The function and phenotype of immune cells are powerfully modulated by their biological milieu and immunologic context. Identifying the signals responsible for regulating context-specific function has provided key insights into immune regulation (1). Obesity induces an immune response with a strong inflammatory phenotype, in which adipose tissue expression and production of classic inflammatory...