Our Bimal Desai, PhD, has discovered an electrical switch within a certain type of immune cell that could let us treat inflammatory diseases including inflammation of the brain, as seen in Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s, for the first time. What he found was that this switch, called an ion channel,…
Macular degeneration robs millions of people of their sight, and now we know what triggers the inflammation that causes it. That raises the exciting possibility we can stop it. Our Jayakrishna Ambati, MD, (at left in the picture) and Nagaraj Kerur, PhD, have identified a specific enzyme that triggers the…
This year represents the silver anniversary of UVA's Beirne Carter Center for Immunology Research. For 25 years, the group has been working to better understand the role of the immune system in battling disease. In that time, the field of immunology has become one of the hottest areas of medical…
I’ve been covering medical discoveries at UVA for about five years now. The two stories that have hit the biggest in the media have been focused ultrasound, which I told you about here, and Jonathan Kipnis’ discovery of a previously unknown connection between the brain and immune system. You’d think…
