Immune system

Senescent cells accumulate in the body over time and fuel chronic inflammation. Researchers have now found a new way to…

Combining knee surgery with a biological injection controls joint inflammation and slows the progression of osteoarthritis in…

A promising strategy to fight cardiovascular disease by dampening inflammation appears to have faltered again.

Two patients first received a kidney from a genetically modified pig and then, months later, a human kidney. Both transplants…

A substance found in edible sea squirts improved memory, reduced inflammation, and even gave older mice thicker, darker fur.…

The brain’s own immune cells can become damaged with age. When they do, they release a protein that disrupts surrounding brain…

Cancer cells are resourceful. They do not just compete for space and nutrients; they also hijack the molecular signals that…

Most people who suffer a heart attack do not have high cholesterol. That observation has troubled cardiologists for decades.

What happens in your gut during the first weeks of life may lay the groundwork for your health decades later.

Senescent cells accumulate as we age. They contribute to inflammation and tissue damage. Now researchers have drawn up a joint…

Cancer cells protect themselves by disarming the immune cells sent to destroy them. They do it using an unexpected tool:…

The immune cells that protect your brain can grow old and start secreting something harmful to their neighbours. A newly…

A single molecular switch in the immune system may help drive aging throughout the body.

Millions of people have a fatty liver without knowing it. When that fatty liver tips into dangerous inflammation, the trigger…

Why does female fertility decline with age? A new study points to a specific inflammatory process deep inside the ovary. And…

The mRNA platform that powered Covid vaccines is now being used against cancer. Promising results in advanced melanoma are…

Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis cause persistent gut inflammation, yet their molecular triggers are not fully understood.

As we age, the composition of our blood changes. Certain white blood cells accumulate in increasing numbers, upsetting the…

In ALS, motor neurons die. New mouse research suggests the disease itself is not the only driver: specific brain immune cells…

Your gut bacteria do far more than digest food. They communicate constantly with your genes, immune system and brain. And as…

A protein that protects cells from their own DNA turns out, when lost, to cause inflammation and accelerated aging.

Our immune system has its own category of cells that can directly clear out senescent cells. But the same cells also play a…

Our body has a system that detects and attacks unwanted pieces of DNA inside the cell nucleus.

Eating less slows ageing, but very few people manage to sustain it. Researchers have now identified a specific blood molecule…

A vaccine against shingles appears to do more than protect against a painful rash.

Women make up around 80% of autoimmune disease patients. A new study points to a difference that begins before any disease…

Senescent cells keep the body in a state of chronic inflammation. New research shows that a protein normally involved in cell…

A vaccine built specifically for one person, based on that person’s tumor DNA, has shown impressive results in a large…

Age-related macular degeneration is the leading cause of central vision loss in older adults. What exactly drives it has long…

In ALS, the brain’s immune cells turn against healthy motor neurons. They eat them alive, mistaking a stress signal for a…

Mitochondria do more than generate energy. They also produce a peptide that directly attacks bacteria and reprograms immune…

Microglia, the brain’s immune cells, change their behavior as you age. New research explains how shifts in their metabolism…

The composition of gut bacteria changes dramatically as you age. That has consequences for your entire body, from your immune…

Fat cells that have become senescent release a protein that circulates through the blood. That protein appears to promote…

Your body constantly produces cells that have done their job and stop dividing. Normally, the immune system clears them out…

Older skin is chronically mildly inflamed, even without any wound or infection.

A vaccine built specifically around each patient’s tumor works. That sounds almost too good to be true, but a large randomized…

People with a rare muscle disease live an average of five years longer than the general population. That sounds paradoxical:…

As we age, certain cells accumulate that can no longer divide. Rather than staying quiet, these cells continuously release…

After 50, your immune system starts to lose ground, but you have more influence over the process than you might think. Here…

Stem cell therapies are offered globally, including in clinics with little regulatory oversight. They can temporarily reduce…

Aging blood stem cells drive chronic inflammation. But what pushes those stem cells into that state in the first place? A…

High blood pressure is the most common risk factor for cardiovascular disease worldwide. Yet how that damage unfolds across…

What if some of the cells in your brain carried a sibling’s genome?

Your immune system remembers past threats so it can respond faster next time. But with age, that memory can go wrong.

The lining of your gut is renewed constantly by stem cells. But with age, those stem cells falter.

The thymus shrinks after your twenties and gradually loses its function. But a hormone it produces, thymulin, remains active…

The immune system weakens as blood stem cells in the bone marrow age.

A promising principle from mouse studies turns out to be harder to apply in people.

Your liver produces bile acids to digest fats. As you age, the composition of those bile acids shifts, and that shift appears…

Gum disease is not just a dental problem. Research suggests the bacterium driving gum inflammation also fuels age-related…

ACE2 has long been considered the gateway through which SARS-CoV-2 enters cells.

A drug-resistant fungus that increasingly infects hospital patients has found a clever hiding place: the hair follicle. There…

A molecule normally known for transporting energy inside cells also controls whether the immune system raises the alarm. That…

How large is the role of chronic inflammation in aging? Larger than many assume, but also smaller than some researchers hope.…

Peanut allergy affects millions worldwide and has no real cure.

Senescent cells stop dividing but do not go quiet. They continuously send inflammatory signals to surrounding tissue. New…

Immune cells that ‘exhaust’ do not fail because they are broken. They switch to an energy-conserving mode. That distinction…

Some people carry a silent time bomb in their blood: stem cells with a small genetic mutation that gradually multiply and take…

The brain replaces its own immune cells as it ages. But the newcomers are more inflammatory than their predecessors.

Inflammation is not simply a defence mechanism that goes wrong. It is also a precision system, and losing that precision may…

Immune cells tasked with attacking tumours burn out before completing the job. New research points to an energy deficit as the…

How does cancer spread through the body? New research maps for the first time how tumours reshape their surroundings as they…

Chronic inflammation is a well-known risk factor for heart disease. So reducing inflammation should protect the heart. That…

A small population of blood stem cells with a growth advantage can silently take over. This process, known as clonal…

Not everyone with Alzheimer’s-related brain changes develops dementia. Why some people decline while others stay sharp has…

Your immune system is supposed to protect you from damage. But in aging skin, that same system can amplify the harm caused by…

Not all senescent cells are alike. A new framework gives them an ordered classification for the first time, based on their…

Breast cancer affects older women more often and behaves differently than in younger women.

A hormone produced by the thymus keeps inflammation under control. But as we age, the thymus shrinks and produces less of it.

Your immune system does far more than fight infections. It maintains tissues, clears damaged cells and keeps cancer in check.

Your blood cells may be biologically older than your calendar age. New research links a common age-related mutation pattern in…

Poor sleep in Alzheimer’s has long been blamed on the brain plaques that define the disease.

The immune system learns from every infection it encounters. That ability depends on a process in which immune cells…

Bone loss is often seen as a routine part of getting older. But the immune system plays a larger role than most people…

The thymus is a small organ that produces T-cells for the immune system. By your fifties, almost no active thymus tissue remains.

A new once-a-month pill that may prevent HIV infection does not have to wait for wealthy countries first.

Deep inside the brain, dedicated cells clean up waste, kill damaged cells and fight infection.

The body sometimes builds its own immune outposts near tumours. Whether those structures hold together and remain effective…

Chronic low-grade inflammation is one of the defining features of aging. But where does it originate? New research points to…

Women aged 75 to 80 with less diverse gut microbiomes are more likely to fall, fracture a hip, or die earlier.

Chemotherapy saves lives but accelerates biological ageing in the body.

The brain keeps making new neurons throughout life. But chronic inflammation appears to shut that process down. Researchers…

A signaling pathway that helps breast cancer grow also strengthens the immune response against the tumor. That paradoxical…

Parkinson’s is widely seen as a brain disease. But new research suggests it may partly originate outside the brain, driven by…

Organs age faster when old immune cells linger too long. New research shows that tissue-resident macrophages, the body’s…

As we age, the thymus, the organ that trains immune cells, shrinks and fills with fat. That weakens immunity.

A serious infection in early life leaves marks on the immune system that remain visible for years. New research from Kenya…

Parkinson’s disease may not start in the brain at all. New research suggests that inflammation in peripheral tissues sends…

In the aging brain, damaged immune cells accumulate in a very specific region: the white matter.

White fat cells store energy. That is their function. But what if you could switch them into burning energy instead, like…

Inside the liver lives a long RNA molecule that keeps the balance between immunity and metabolism in check. In ageing mice,…

A century-old tuberculosis vaccine appears to do something surprising in the brain.

How do immune cells kill a cancer cell? And how fast does it happen?

Antibodies are known for fighting infection. But new research shows they also help shape the connections between brain cells…

The immune system has dedicated cells that detect and destroy cancer. But sometimes they don’t work as well as they should.

The immune system can turn against its own host. That is the core of autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis.

Some people reach a hundred years without succumbing to chronic disease. A variant of the gene BPIFB4 appears to help. New…

The pancreas does not repair itself alone. A specific group of immune cells turns out to play a key role in sustaining the tissue.

When blood vessel cells clear out damaged energy units, they release signals that ramp up immune activity.

The composition of your gut bacteria shifts as you age. But why exactly?

Your gut is an ecosystem, much like a forest or an ocean. New insights show that ecological rules, competition for food and…

Blood stem cells become less reliable with age. But a layer of intermediate cells appears to compensate for that decline, and…

As women age, the tissue around their egg follicles hardens. A specific inflammatory protein drives this process, and blocking…

Not all cells read their DNA the same way. How a cell responds to disease depends partly on which stretches of its DNA are…

As we age, our blood-making system weakens. Researchers have now identified a single molecular brake that drives that decline…

Exhausted immune cells that accumulate as we age. One company thinks it can reprogramme them to behave like young cells again.…

People with diabetes suffer from serious shoulder problems far more often than those without. The link has been known for some…

Not all immune cells in the liver do the same job. A new study shows that liver-resident immune cells protect themselves…

Some families stay healthier into old age, generation after generation. A rare genetic mutation may explain part of that, and…

People who live to 100 aren’t just older versions of 80-year-olds. Their blood tells a different biological story.

Your immune system ages. It becomes slower, chronically inflamed, and less effective at fighting infection and cancer.

A thin layer of fat wraps around most small arteries. In healthy people, it helps vessels relax. In obesity and high blood…

Aged cells cause inflammation throughout the body. Now researchers have identified a specific mechanism that drives this process.

Some cells in your body are shielded from your own immune response.

Aging clocks measure how old you are biologically. Most look at chemical tags on your DNA.

Older adults vaccinated against shingles appear significantly less likely to develop dementia. That’s striking, because the…

Your immune system remembers more than just infections. Immune cells can learn from earlier activation and respond more…

The immune system can attack cancer in a way researchers long overlooked: by damaging the blood vessels that feed a tumor.…

A plant extract long used in Southeast Asian traditional medicine significantly reduced signs of gut inflammation in animal…

What a mother eats shapes her newborn’s immune system. That idea is not new, but a study in Science now points to one very…

What happens inside the body after senescent cells are cleared? A new study maps the answer in unprecedented detail, and the…

Senescent cells are known to fuel chronic inflammation, but the precise molecular trigger has been elusive. New research…

Pulmonary fibrosis is a serious condition in which lung tissue progressively stiffens and suffers irreversible damage.…

A protein long studied in autoimmune disease turns out to offer more drug targets than previously thought. And some people are…

An extract from a South American blueberry helps blood vessel cells form new branches. It also dampens one of the most…

A protein in brain cells turns out to be critical for Parkinson’s disease.

Mutations typically linked to blood cancer also appear to play a role in Alzheimer’s disease. That unexpected finding could…

Your immune system doesn’t just keep pathogens out. It also actively controls which gut bacteria get space to grow and which…

The chronic low-grade inflammation that comes with old age has long been linked to dementia, heart problems and muscle loss.

As we age, more and more of our own DNA ends up in the wrong place inside our cells. The immune system reads this as an…

Sepsis is a life-threatening condition where infection triggers uncontrolled inflammation and organ failure. New research…

Atherosclerosis turns dangerous when immune cells stop doing their job. A small piece of genetic material may decide which way…

Why do some viruses replicate so efficiently that they overwhelm the immune system?

Wet macular degeneration is one of the most common causes of blindness in older age.

In Alzheimer’s disease, the brain’s immune system stays permanently switched on.

Your immune system can learn from an infection and respond faster next time. That sounds helpful. But in chronic gut…

Much of the twentieth century’s gains in life expectancy came from controlling infectious disease. But even people who…

The brain has its own immune cells that are supposed to clean up toxic debris, including the protein clumps linked to…

Sepsis is one of the deadliest complications of severe infection, especially in older adults.

People with certain cancer-linked gene mutations sometimes respond better to immunotherapy. New research explains why: faults…

Organised clusters of immune cells inside tumours follow the same structural pattern across dozens of cancer types. That is…

CBD is best known for easing pain or anxiety. But new research in mice suggests it may also suppress inflammation in the brain.

When the immune system detects a threat, B cells do not just produce antibodies. They also completely restructure their…

Microglia, the immune cells of the brain, do more than clear damage. They also control hormone production through a specific…

Tuberculosis still kills more than a million people every year. Older adults are far more likely to die from it than younger…

Cancer immunotherapy only works for a minority of patients. The reason: many tumors leave the immune system cold. A new mRNA…

Most treatments for cardiovascular disease work by lowering cholesterol or dampening inflammation. Cyclarity is taking a…

Most cancer immunotherapies work only for a minority of patients. A new mRNA treatment drastically increased immune responses…

Neutrophils are the most abundant white blood cells in the human body. They survive for only hours to days.

Aged skin heals poorly. But a toxic bacterial substance, given before an injury occurs, makes that skin noticeably better at…

Not all RNA in the cell makes proteins. Much of it stays untranslated and regulates other genes instead.

Most cardiovascular therapies lower cholesterol or reduce inflammation. A new clinical result takes a different approach:…

A dietary amino acid shapes gut barrier function and immune regulation through a microbial pathway that has only recently been…

Most cardiovascular treatments lower LDL cholesterol or reduce inflammation. A new drug candidate takes a different approach,…

The brains of Alzheimer’s patients contain cells with DNA errors not found in healthy brains.

Doctors are increasingly ignoring sepsis detection alerts. Not because they take the condition less seriously, but because the…

The bacterial community living in your gut shifts as you age, becoming less diverse, more inflammatory. For years, researchers…

Scientists have engineered nanoparticles capable of activating an immune response across the entire body simultaneously, not…

The immune system doesn’t stay neatly separate from the brain.

The immune system must constantly calibrate its own reactions. Too little and pathogens win. Too much and the body damages itself.

Your immune system is constantly making a judgment call: how strong should the response be? Too weak and an infection wins.…

Lung fibrosis is one of the hardest age-related diseases to treat. Scar tissue replaces healthy lung tissue, breathing grows…

The weight can come off. But according to a new study in mice, the immune system may hold onto a memory of obesity long after…

Every time you fight an infection or respond to a vaccine, your immune system runs a miniature evolutionary competition. The…

People living at high altitude have less oxygen available. That has a surprising consequence: their immune systems appear…

Deep inside the aging liver, a rogue population of immune cells is fueling chronic inflammation and driving disease.

Researchers have identified a molecular switch inside the body’s blood-forming cells that gets triggered by stress and appears…

Cancer cells have a way of making themselves invisible to the immune system’s hunters.

Not all ant colonies build at the same pace. New experiments show that the age structure of a colony, how many young versus…

Not all ant colonies build the same way. New experiments show that a colony's age structure -- how many young versus old…

Cancer cells deploy a molecular trick to conceal themselves from the immune system.

A small molecule that blocks one of the body’s central inflammation engines has passed its first clinical test in humans.

Two of the most discussed phenomena in aging research, chronic low-grade inflammation and the biological clock of cells, are…

Women tend to mount stronger immune responses than men, but their immune systems also appear to shift more dramatically as…

A small molecule that blocks one of the body's central engines of inflammation has passed its first clinical test in humans.

Two of the most talked-about phenomena in aging research, chronic low-grade inflammation and the biological clock of cells,…

A small molecule that blocks a key inflammation trigger in the brain has cleared its first human trial without serious side…

Two of the most discussed processes in aging science, chronic low-grade inflammation and epigenetic changes in DNA, turn out…

As people age, their risk of joint inflammation rises, not just because joints wear down, but because the body quietly loses…

AI models that study proteins have a blind spot: they learn from data without understanding how evolution actually works.

What if your immune system could be programmed once and then protect you for life, without ever needing a booster?

Your body can be biologically older or younger than your birth certificate suggests, and a type of inflammation you never feel…

Sitting still in intense heat turns out to do something the body normally reserves for physical exertion.

Hidden inside the livers of people with fatty liver disease is a population of immune cells that have biologically aged, and…

Fever is widely recognized as a defense mechanism, but the precise molecular pathway has remained poorly understood.

Scientists have known for decades that cutting calories extends lifespan in mice.

After decades of research focused on amyloid plaques and tau tangles, a study points to a neglected signalling molecule in the…

Tuberculosis kills more people each year than almost any other infectious disease. The bacterium survives by hiding inside the…

A single half-hour sauna session causes a significant but temporary spike in circulating white blood cells, according to new…

The same technique that has transformed cancer treatment, reprogramming immune cells to hunt down disease, is now being aimed…

Blood cancer cells cloak themselves in a layer of sugar molecules that tells the immune system to stand down.

Nipah has caused small, deadly outbreaks across South Asia for decades. The conditions for a larger epidemic are worsening.…

Older adults who received a high-dose flu vaccine showed a greater reduction in dementia risk than those who got the standard…

Older adults who received a high-dose flu shot were more likely to avoid dementia than those who got a standard dose.

The trade in wild animals has been one of the primary routes for new diseases jumping from animals to humans for at least…

Cancer cells are skilled escape artists. But leukemia cells have a particularly elegant trick: they coat themselves in sugar…

Older people don’t die from the flu more often simply because they’re frail.

Immunity doesn’t age the same way in everyone. A new study of nearly a thousand people reveals that women and men follow…

Cartilage heals slowly even in young people, but in older age that capacity nearly disappears.

Influenza kills tens of thousands of people every year in the US alone, and many of those deaths aren’t directly from the…

Same species, same lifespan pressures, but the immune system ages in strikingly different ways depending on whether you’re…

CAR T-cell therapy transformed blood cancer treatment. But for solid tumors, the most common cancers, it has largely failed.

CAR T-cell therapy has saved lives in blood cancers. But in solid tumors -- the most common forms of cancer -- it has barely…

Bacteria have been fighting viruses for billions of years, and in doing so have evolved a vast and largely unknown arsenal of…

In early 2024, a strain of bird flu turned up in American dairy herds.

Your blood does far more than carry oxygen. A new piece in Science describes how blood components can directly neutralise…

Mitochondria have long been known as the cell’s energy generators.

Tuberculosis bacteria survive inside the very immune cells meant to destroy them.

Tuberculosis bacteria survive in the body by hiding inside your own cells.

Microgravity wastes muscle, radiation damages DNA, and the immune system goes haywire. A few months in space does to the human…

Not all immune cells are created equal in the fight against cancer.

Arterial plaque is the silent engine behind most heart attacks and strokes.

Cancer cells produce chemical compounds that healthy cells do not. Researchers have now reprogrammed immune cells to detect…

The brain has its own immune cells, called microglia, and it turns out they age very differently from what scientists assumed.

A study of 527 women has mapped how breast tissue changes with age in unprecedented spatial detail: cell density drops,…

A study of 527 women shows that as breast tissue ages, it doesn't just shrink -- it also becomes richer in immune cells and…

Animal studies show that nanoplastics cause tissue dysfunction at high doses.

Your gut microbiome sends messages directly to your brain through metabolites and inflammatory signals.

Cancer cells leak specific metabolites, chemical byproducts of their abnormally high energy use. Researchers have now…

Why does one vaccine protect you for life, while another barely lasts a year?

The immune system has a memory. Everyone already knew that from vaccines.

A small organ tucked behind the breastbone, largely ignored after childhood, turns out to be one of the more powerful…

CAR T-cell therapy is one of the most powerful tools oncology has produced in decades, but its complexity and cost put it out…

A small organ behind your breastbone that most people never think about turns out to be a powerful predictor of death.

Asthma caused by air pollution responds differently to treatment than classic allergic asthma, and now we know why.

Tuberculosis kills more than a million people every year. Yet only a small fraction of those who breathe in the bacteria ever…

Your immune system ages differently from most organs: it does not simply weaken, it also becomes chronically inflamed.

The composition of the gut microbiome shifts with age, and not for the better. But why, exactly?

CAR T-cell therapy is one of the most promising weapons against cancer, but producing it is slow, expensive and fiendishly…

A small organ tucked behind the breastbone, largely ignored after childhood, turns out to be one of the more powerful…

The same technology behind mRNA vaccines is now being aimed at one of the world's most devastating diseases.

Scientists have discovered a direct biological circuit linking stress to skin inflammation.

Scientists have uncovered a fundamentally new principle behind how your immune system senses danger and responds at lightning…

We have long known that strong social bonds keep you healthy, but a new study now reveals the flip side: people surrounded by…

CAR T-cell therapy is one of the most powerful tools oncology has produced in decades, but its complexity and cost put it out…

Stress is the most reliable trigger for alcohol relapse. A new study in mice and rats maps the specific neural circuit…

Your immune system is not just your shield against pathogens -- it is also one of the first systems to buckle under the weight…

Chronic low-grade inflammation, known as "inflammaging," is one of the most dangerous silent drivers of aging.

Your brain has its own immune system. The cells that make it up are called microglia, and they do far more than fight infections.

As you get older, your immune system is increasingly on high alert, even when there is no real threat.