Scientists of the Global Cardiovascular Risk Consortium under the auspices of the Department of Cardiology at the University Heart & Vascular Center of the Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) and the German Center for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK) have proven that the five classic cardiovascular risk factors overweight, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, smoking, and diabetes mellitus are directly connected to more than half of all cardiovascular diseases worldwide. High blood pressure is the most significant factor for the occurrence of heart attacks and strokes.

The application period for the DKMS John Hansen Research Grant 2024 began on August 1, 2023. With this grant, the foundation DKMS Stiftung Leben Spenden supports up to four outstanding research projects in the field of stem cell transplantation or cell therapy each year. A stem cell transplant saves the lives of many blood cancer patients. However, relapses and severe complications continue to pose major challenges. The grant is intended to promote excellent science in this field. The application deadline is November 30, 2023.

There is news from the immune system: Dendritic cells migrate in a network along the outside of blood vessels. Local cytokines keep this dynamic network stable.

Researchers at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf have demonstrated cross-reactive immune responses to another SARS-CoV-2 protein besides the spike protein. The research team found a broad immune system T cell response to the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase of SARS-CoV-2 in blood samples from COVID patients as well as from subjects who were never infected with SARS-CoV-2. The T cells of the never-infected probands presumably arose from previous infection with other common cold coronaviruses and cross-reacted with the SARS-CoV-2 RNA polymerase in the tests.

Diet drinks often contain a mix of non-nutritive sweeteners that also enter the bloodstream after consumption. As a new pilot study shows, even dietary intake levels of saccharin, acesulfame-K and cyclamate are enough to modulate the copy rate of various genes in white blood cells. „Our data suggest that this modulation sensitizes immune cells to certain immune stimuli,“ says Dietmar Krautwurst of the Leibniz Institute for Food Systems Biology at the Technical University of Munich. He adds: “Likewise, they also suggest that taste receptors may act as sweetener sensors of the cellular immune system.”

Immunoglobulin G antibodies (IgB) play an important role as drivers of inflammation in infectious diseases and autoimmune diseases. However, if the same immunoglobulin antibodies from the blood plasma of healthy donors are cleansed and injected into a patient’s bloodstream, they exhibit anti-inflammatory effects and have a positive effect on the immune system. The cause of this was unknown to a large extent up to now.

Bears in hibernation and also paraplegic people spend months or even years lying almost motionless. In healthy people, however, bedriddenness is always accompanied by the risk of thrombosis. A paradox, but nevertheless an everyday occurrence. This contradiction has now been investigated by an international research team led by Matthias Mann, Director at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, and PD Dr. med. Tobias Petzold, cardiologist at the LMU Hospital Munich. They found a mechanism that occurs in brown bears, as well as paraplegics, and that prevents the formation of blood clots. This discovery could open up new therapeutic options. The results were published in the journal Science.

Neonatology team of the University Hospital Bonn publishes findings

Bonn, April 5, 2023 – The neonatology team at the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) has conducted the world’s first study of children receiving ECMO therapy using the mobile magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The procedure, known as extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), involves oxygenating the blood outside the body. The findings of the successful, innovative study of the first four pediatric ECMO patients using the mobile MRI has now been published in the prestigious journal Critical Care.

Bone is the second most commonly transplanted tissue after blood, with about two million bone transplants performed worldwide each year – but often with only moderate therapeutic success. Cell-based therapies could provide an alternative approach to transplantation. Together with colleagues from Paracelsus Medical Private University (PMU) Salzburg, researchers at the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH) have now demonstrated that human progenitor cells can regenerate large bone defects and form new mineralized tissue. The researchers have published the findings from their work in the journal Science Translational Medicine*.

People with a third copy of chromosome 21, known as trisomy 21, are at high risk of developing Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML), an aggressive form of blood cancer. Scientists led by the Department of Paediatrics at University Hospital Frankfurt have now identified the cause: although the additional chromosome 21 leads to increased gene dosage of many genes, it is above all the perturbation of the RUNX1 gene – a gene that regulates many other genes – that seems to be responsible for AML pathogenesis. Targeting the perturbed regulator could pave the way for new therapies.

Haematopoietic stem cell transplantation for the treatment of severe blood cancers is the only medical intervention that has cured two people living with HIV in the past. An international group of physicians and researchers from Germany, the Netherlands, France, Spain, and the United States has now identified another case in which HIV infection has been shown to be cured in the same way. In a study published this week in Nature Medicine, in which DZIF scientists from Hamburg and Cologne played a leading role, the successful healing process of this third patient was for the first time characterised in great detail virologically and immunologically over a time span of ten years.

Ginger has a reputation for stimulating the immune system. New results from the Leibniz Institute for Food Systems Biology at the Technical University of Munich (Leibniz-LSB@TUM) now support this thesis. In laboratory tests, small amounts of a pungent ginger constituent put white blood cells on heightened alert. The study also shows that this process involves a type of receptor that plays a role in the perception of painful heat stimuli and the sensation of spiciness in food.

Kiel research team discovers links between certain gene mutation and the spatial structure of DNA in blood cancer at an advanced age

Novel drugs, such as vaccines against covid-19, among others, are based on drug transport using nanoparticles. Whether this drug transport is negatively influenced by an accumulation of blood proteins on the nanoparticle’s surface was not clarified for a long time. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research have now followed the path of such a particle into a cell using a combination of several microscopy methods. They were able to observe a cell-internal process that effectively separates blood components and nanoparticles.

The underlying mechanisms of long COVID are not yet fully understood. Molecular clues to different subgroups of long COVID have now been provided by a research group at University Medicine Halle.

Anomalies in the formation of blood and lymphatic vessels are, thankfully, rare. Those who do have them face a lifetime of complications that can range from the mild to the life-threatening. To date, little is known about the causes, which means the diagnostic and treatment options are very limited. René Hägerling of the BIH Center for Regenerative Therapies (BCRT) has made it his mission to remedy this. His good ideas have won the regard of the European Research Council (ERC), which has awarded Hägerling, who leads a junior research group, an ERC Starting Grant of €1.5 million over five years.

Scientists have created a new roadmap that traces each step in the development of blood stem cells in the human embryo, providing scientists with a blueprint for producing fully functional blood stem cells in the lab. The research could help expand treatment options for blood cancers like leukemia and inherited blood disorders such as sickle cell disease.

A new study suggests that people with cancer and non-O blood types, such as types A, B, and AB, face an increased risk of developing venous thromboembolism (VTE), or blood clots in the veins, three months after their initial diagnosis. Scientists have long strived to understand the risk factors for VTE, the leading cause of preventable hospital deaths in the United States. Existing assessments use factors like tumor or cancer type to detect those at high risk of VTE. Yet, many patients without these diagnoses still develop life-threatening blood clots but go unidentified.

An international study demonstrates that the body’s immune system attacks itself in a rare type of blood cancer. Consequently, treatment should be targeted at the immune system as well, not only the cancer cells.

Although clinical labs have known for almost a century that a oddly shaped nucleus resembling pince-nez glasses in blood cells could indicate leukemia, the cause of this anomaly remained unknown. Scientists have now discovered that loss of nuclear Lamin B1 induces defects in the nuclear morphology and in human hematopoietic [blood-forming] stem cells associated with malignancy. The scientists went on to detail that lamin B1 deficiency alters genome organization. This in turn causes expansion of blood-forming stem cells, a bias towards their becoming myeloids, genome instability due to defective DNA damage repair and other problems that set the stage for cancer.

Although clinical labs have known for almost a century that a oddly shaped nucleus resembling pince-nez glasses in blood cells could indicate leukemia, the cause of this anomaly remained unknown. Scientists have now discovered that loss of nuclear Lamin B1 induces defects in the nuclear morphology and in human hematopoietic [blood-forming] stem cells associated with malignancy. The scientists went on to detail that lamin B1 deficiency alters genome organization. This in turn causes expansion of blood-forming stem cells, a bias towards their becoming myeloids, genome instability due to defective DNA damage repair and other problems that set the stage for cancer.

Ten-second videos of white blood cell motion in the skin’s microvasculature greatly improved the prediction of which stem cell and bone marrow transplant patients would have a relapse of their blood cancer.

Thanks to antiretroviral therapy, HIV infection is no longer the life sentence it once was. But despite the effectiveness of drugs to manage and treat the virus, it can never be fully eliminated from the human body, lingering in some cells deep in different human tissues where it goes unnoticed by the immune system. Now, new research by University of Alberta immunologist Shokrollah Elahi reveals a possible answer to the mystery of why infected people can’t get rid of HIV altogether. Elahi and his team found that in HIV patients, killer T cells — a type of white blood cells responsible for identifying and destroying cells infected with viruses — have very little to none of a protein called CD73. Because CD73 is responsible for migration and cell movement into the tissue, the lack of the protein compromises the ability of killer T cells to find and eliminate HIV-infected cells, explained Elahi.

Researchers have been able to re-engineer red blood cells and use them as a promising new vehicle for vaccine delivery.

Scientists determined that 9/11 first responders to the World Trade Center have increased levels of mutations that escalate their risk for blood cancers or cardiovascular disease, according to a new study.