Researchers across the planet are racing to harness one of our immune system’s front-line defenders as an early treatment for COVID-19, the disease caused by coronavirus that has killed more than ...

In severe cases of COVID-19, a person’s immune system throws everything it has at the coronavirus, but some of the weapons it lobs end up hurting the patient instead of fighting the virus. Now ...

A component of the human interferon system that activates SARS-CoV-2 cellular defenses appears to be defective in a proportion of humans, new research reports. COVID-19 outcomes were more severe in ...

Researchers have discovered that Type I interferon (IFN) plays a key role in helping the immune system effectively target viruses, while stopping white blood cells from 'going rogue' and attacking the ...

Bonn, November 8, 2022 - The innate immune system fights infectious agents. The alarm messenger interferon plays a central role in this. However, if it is produced in the absence of an infection, it ...

These intercellular messages, ferried about by molecules called interferons, serve as a warning signal to nearby cells—“‘You are about to be infected; it’s time for you to set up an antiviral state,’” ...

The paper E.N. Judd et al., “Positive natural selection in primate genes of the type I interferon response,” BMC Ecol Evol, 21:65, 2021. In humans, one of the host cell’s first lines of defense ...

Two genes with very strong associations with the disease SLE have been identified by a team of scientists headed by researchers at the Department of Medical Sciences at Uppsala University. The ...

The expanding use of small RNA technology to silence specific genes shows no signs of slowing down. However, the discovery that it can induce components of the interferon system in animal cells should ...