The availability of human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) from healthy individuals and from patients with various diseases allows for many studies on normal and abnormal functions of human immune cells. Because human and murine immune biology differs in many ways, it is important that various methodologies for studying human immunology are established. The two reports highlighted below demonstrate the usage of human PBMCs for mechanistic and pre-clinical human immune cell studies.

The Notch signaling pathway plays a vital role in the regulation of asymmetric cell division, cell fate specification and proliferation. Mammals possess 4 different Notch receptors, referred to as Notch1, 2, 3, and 4. The Notch receptor is a hetero-oligomer transmembrane protein that comprises a large extracellular domain, a single-pass transmembrane span, and a small intracellular region.

An interesting poster has recently been published by XenoTech: “Selection of Human Liver S9 and Cytosol Fractions for Evaluating Clearance by Aldehyde Oxidase (AO): The Impact of Low Versus High AO Activity Lots” by Phyllis Yerino, Clayton Otwell, Zell Woodworth and David B Buckley (XenoTech, LLC, Lenexa, KS, USA).

Pr. Ruo-Pan Huang’s team has just published a review detailing the interactions between cancer and immune cells.

This overview describes the key cytokine signals, cell–cell signal networks in the tumor microenvironment during cancer diseases. It also demonstrates the power of antibody arrays and multiplex immunoassays as unique research tools to decipher cytokine networks during cancer and inflammation processes.

Source:

Brett Burkholder et al. “Tumor-induced perturbations of cytokines and immune cell networks” (2014) BBA – Reviews on Cancer, Vol. 1845 no. 2, 182–201. DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bbcan.2014.01.004