June 11, 2019 – Active T

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Anchor lead: A new approach to engaging the immune system may help with common infections, Elizabeth Tracey reports

You’ve likely had a number of vaccines in your lifetime to protect you against common infections like measles and mumps. These rely on the production of antibodies in your blood, and now another approach to vaccines that might activate immune cells against the common skin infection Staph aureus is being investigated by Lloyd Miller and colleagues at Johns Hopkins.

Miller: Instead of focusing on these antibody responses and we focus now on the T cells we may actually get a preventive vaccine or immunotherapy against staph infections in the future.  :10

Miller says its not known why some people get really invasive staph infections.

Miller: We’re very focused on engaging the host’s own immune response and figuring out why certain people can develop and clear staph infection and why others can’t. and maybe some people develop this T cell response and others don’t.  :13

Engaging the T cell response may point the way toward new treatments, Miller says. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.