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Katherine Edwards, PhD Student, Queen’s University Belfast Cytokines play a vital role in immune responses enabling cross-talk between different cell types and inducing activation, differentiation, proliferation and cell migration by altering gene expression in target cell types. There are a wide variety of cytokines each with varying roles which when produced in different combinations can lead to various outcomes. Cytokines can promote inflammation and aid migration of effector immune cells to sites of infection or damage where these cells then work as a team to combat the problem. Cytokines can also be anti-inflammatory – these cytokines are relea …

Traumatic injuries & death When I ask people what the leading cause of death is in the United States in people age 44 and under, they generally reply saying cancer. It wouldn’t be illogical to think that this is the answer, but it would be incorrect. In fact, unintentional traumatic injuries are responsible for more deaths in these age groups than any other cause such as homicide, cancer or heart disease. Accidental traumatic injury can be categorized into several groups such as blunt-force trauma, hemorrhage, crush injuries, bone fractures, radiation injury and any of these in combination. These types of injuries happen in traumatic scenarios like …

Laura Menke PhD candidate, Queen Mary University of London Inflammation vs. Resolution Atherothrombosis is the leading cause of death worldwide and can be linked to the formation of blood clots in the vascular system. Depending on the location of clot formation, atherothrombosis can stimulate a variety of disease pathologies such as stroke, heart infarct and even leg ischemia, which makes research regarding prevention and treatment of this disease so important. Epidemiological studies indicate that in our society with increased age and enhanced obesity and diabetes prevalence, the risk of vascular diseases will further increase and reac …

Interferons (IFNs) are a group of signalling proteins that are produced and released from cells in response to viral infection and other stimuli such as normal and tumour cell survival and death. IFNs interact with specific cellular receptors, thereby promoting production of secondary messengers which leads to the expression of antiviral and immune modulatory genes. There are three groups of IFNs, Type I IFNs, Type II IFNs and Type III IFNs. Type I IFNs include IFN-alpha, -beta, -omega, -kappa and IFN-zeta. These are essential for regulating the immune response to viral infections. The Type II IFN group only includes IFN-gamma. IFN-gamma is a versatile cytokine that plays an essen …

By Charlotte O'Donnell PhD The genes of the IL-36 family members are located in a cluster on chromosome 2 [1]. All three activating ligands, IL-36α, IL-36β and IL-36γ share the classic IL-1 β-trefoil structure, and lack a signal peptide. IL-36α, IL-36β, and IL-36γ lack a signal sequence, and thus cannot be transported to the endoplasmic reticulum. Similar to IL-1β and IL-18, the N-terminus must be cleaved for full agonist or antagonist bioactivity of each of the IL-36 cytokines. The protease responsible for this cleavage has not yet been elucidated. It is not thought to be a caspase as the site does not resemble a caspase cleavage site [2]. These th …