Virus are elusive foes. It seems like every year there's a new one in the news - Ebola recently and now Zika - not to …
Tag: immunology
Stanford alumnus writes children’s book to inspire next generation of curious minds
Soon there will be a new superhero children’s book available, but these superheroes aren’t from Marvel comics. The book, Rose’s Superhero Birthday: An Immune Cell …
Stanford scientists co-opt viral machinery to create medical delivery system
Stanford engineering researcher James Swartz, PhD, and his colleagues have remodeled a hepatitis B virus to turn it into a microscopic taxi for medical therapies. The …
Adult humans harbor lots of risky autoreactive immune cells, study finds
If a new study published in Immunity is on the mark, the question immunologists may start asking themselves will be not "Why do some people …
Not immune from the charms of the immune system
Welcome to Biomed Bites, a weekly feature that introduces readers to some of Stanford’s most innovative researchers. Once upon a time, a researcher named Holden …
Frenemies: Chronic cytomegalovirus infection boosts flu vaccination efficacy (IF you’re young)
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend." This phrase, or at least the thinking it embodies, is at least 2,400 years old. So, there …
Drugs for bugs: Industry seeks small molecules to target, tweak and tune up our gut microbes
My first encounter with microbiologist Justin Sonnenburg, PhD, came when I was researching "Caution: Do Not Debug," an article I wrote five years ago for …
Chronic fatigue syndrome gets more respect (and a new name)
As has been widely reported, an Institute of Medicine (IOM) report released yesterday acknowledged that chronic fatigue syndrome is a real and serious disease and renamed the …
A discussion of vaccines, “the single most life-saving innovation ever in the history of medicine”
In a recent, in-depth interview with KCBS Radio, now available online, Stanford immunologist Mark Davis, PhD, called vaccines “the single most life-saving medical innovation ever …
With a Gates Foundation grant, Stanford launches major effort to expedite vaccine discovery
The vaccine field got a major boost today with the announcement that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will invest $50 million in a new …
Is honey the new antibiotic?
...Well, not quite. But recent research shows that honey does have infection-fighting properties surprisingly similar to the common antibiotic ampicillin. And even more importantly, honey …
In human defenses against disease, environment beats heredity, study of twins shows
I'm one of those people who've paid to have their genomes analyzed for the purpose of getting a handle on susceptibility to this or that …
Silicon Valley entrepreneur Sean Parker establishes allergy center at Stanford
Here at Scope, we’ve often written about the life-threatening nature of allergic reactions and the work that Stanford scientists are doing to understand dangerous allergies. …
Patients' reaction to ME/CFS coverage in Stanford Medicine magazine
In the last few weeks, Stanford published two articles on chronic fatigue syndrome, a.k.a. myalgic encephalomyelitis, and the outpouring of positive feedback from ME/CFS patients …
Knight in lab: In days of yore, postdoc armed with quaint research tools found immunology's Holy Grail
A human has only about 25,000 genes. So, it’s tough to imagine just how our immune systems can manage to recognize potentially billions of differently shaped …
Unbroken: A chronic fatigue syndrome patient’s long road to recovery
“Fatigue is what we experience, but it is what a match is to an atomic bomb,” said Laura Hillenbrand, the author of Unbroken, about how …