What’s trogocytocis? the practice of eating, well, something else’s flesh. It sounds like something that trolls do. But actually, it appears that T cells do this, and in particular, T reg cells do it to antigen presenting cells and to other T cells. Dendritic cells do it to tumors, and it may be critically important for host defense against cancer. Perhaps more to the point for autoimmunity, both Teff and nTregs can acquire MHC filled with peptides from antigen presenting cells (APCs). Is this how Tregs control their targets, T effector cells? Continue reading →

I’ll be Thinking Out Loud this fall. What does that mean? It means that I’m going to get serious about sharing ideas through my Epi-blog this fall, and I’d like to get your feedback. Sharing ideas is important, and the work we’re doing – translating ideas into medicines, has a huge impact on human health. Continue reading →

Researchers gathered to hear the latest Tregitope research updates on May 11, 2011. Representatives from the FDA, Pfizer, Amgen, CSL Behring, Lilly & C0., and academic experts from McGill University, the NIH, Harvard, Childrens’ Hospital of Philadelphia University of Massachusetts, NIHS (Japan) discussed the latest Tregitope findings, including the effects on transplantation tolerance, allergy, protein therapeutics, and autoimmunity. Continue reading →

Why is the recent announcment that Humira was immunogenic in a clinical study “Déjà vu all over again?” – It is reaffirmation that T-cell driven immunogenicity is critically important to the success of biologics in the clinic. It is also reaffirmation that relying on ‘fully human’ source of the biologic sequence is not the easy solution that we’d like to believe in, for biologic drug development. We might have to use our brains . . . Continue reading →