Ben Youngblood, PhD

Learning more about T cells through studying behavior in Type 1 diabetes

Posted by Ben Youngblood, PhD | Mar 30, 2020 | Research | 0

Studying our immune system’s T cells in Type 1 diabetics offers insights into their behavior and how it could be changed to treat pediatric cancer.

Discovering how T cell “exhaustion” is triggered could energize cancer immunotherapy

Posted by Ben Youngblood, PhD | Jun 17, 2019 | Research | 0

Researchers discovered a gene that triggers T cell exhaustion, limiting the body’s ability to fight disease. Now learning how to inhibit that gene may lead to improved cancer and viral infections.

Cells trained to recognize returning infections

Posted by Ben Youngblood, PhD | May 31, 2018 | Research | 0

How our lab found out Memory T cells are made, not born How are memory T cells formed? The answer could help researchers design more effective vaccines and expand cancer immunotherapies. Our lab conducted experiments to help resolve this question, and what we found has established a path to further investigate how to effectively support them in a body’s efforts to rid itself of pathogens. We worked specifically with CD8 T cells, a powerful part of our body’s immune system. These cells eradicate intracellular infections, and through vaccination, manufacture immunity to chronic illness and cancer. What are T cells...

Supercharging T cells to fight cancer

Posted by Ben Youngblood, PhD | Nov 28, 2017 | Research | 0

When it comes to cancer therapies, the field is abuzz with enthusiasm for treatments that rely on the patient’s own immune cells. What are T cells? Immunotherapies for cancer enlist the body’s own immune system to kill cancer cells. One such therapy, called immune checkpoint blockade, involves patients receiving a drug that reactivates a patient’s T cells, a type of white blood cell trained to recognize and attack viruses and tumors, allowing them to kill virally infected or tumor cells. These tumor-fighting T cells detect a protein, called an antigen, on the cancer cells’ surface that triggers the attack....