Application immunology

Occupational asthma is potentially fatal. In two recent reports of deaths, the patients had remained exposed to the causal agents, TDI and flour, for economic reasons (Fabbri el al., 1988 Ehrlich, 1994). Care of a worker with a diagnosis of occupational asthma must therefore focus on eliminating exposure. Unfortunately, this often entails loss of employment. Patients who decide to remain in a job with exposure against medical advice can be supported by respiratory protection and medication but this must be accompanied by monitoring of symptoms, lung function and, where applicable, immunological responsiveness. 

With a known sensitizer, it will be useful to know the current environmental levels of the chemical and the asthma frequency rate in the workforce. If there is no regular environmental monitoring programme, a one-off survey would be helpful. A health surveillance programme to monitor respiratory symptoms will be needed and this may be supplemented by lung function tests and, where applicable, immunological tests. 

Filtering cells and cell fractions from fluid media. These particles, after concentration by filtration, may be examined through subsequent quantitative or qualitative analysis. The filtration techniques also have applications in fields related to immunology and implantation of tissues as well as in cytological evaluation of cerebrospinal, fluid. 

A foil discussion of each of the above categories of biological medicines and related agents covered by each of the categories is beyond the scope of this brief essay. However, ImmunoFacts is the most current and comprehensive collection of immunologic and vaccine information and is continuously updated for clinical application, including side effects [5]. 

The first mouse monoclonal antibody specific for human CD3 was produced in 1979 and named orthoclone OKT3. Aside from its use in the laboratory, OKT3 became the first anti-CD3 antibody to be utilized in transplantation medicine, but its wider application was hampered by its immunogenic and mitogenic properties (reviewed in [6]). Consequently, humanized and engineered anti-CD3 antibodies were developed to circumvent these limitations (Table 1). Since T cells and the TCR are involved in many immunological diseases, it is not surprising that the application of CD3 antibodies is not restricted to the field of transplantation. For example, CD3 antibodies are tested in clinical studies of diseases such as autoimmune diabetes (type 1 diabetes), immune-mediated inflammatory arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease [7]. 

The science of immunology is one of the most rapidly expanding sciences and represents a vast area of knowledge and research thus, in a short chapter it is impossible to deal in depth with its theory and application and a list of further reading is given at the end of the chapter. 

Monoclonal antibodies are very sensitive, specific reagents and have applications in many areas of the biological sciences. They revolutionized immunology within a few years of their discovery. 

The first application of immunologically based technology to pesticides was not reported until 1970, when Centeno and Johnson developed antibodies that selectively bound malathion. A few years later, radioimmunoassays were developed for aldrin and dieldrin and for parathion. In 1972, Engvall and Perlman introduced the use of enzymes as labels for immunoassay and launched the term enzyme-linked... 

J.W. Goding, Monoclonal Antibodies Principles and Practice Production and Application of Monoclonal Antibodies in Cell Biology, Biochemistry and Immunology, Academic Press, London (1996). 

The development of vaccines is one of the most successful practical applications in immunology and in this field it is currently fashionable to make the reductionist claim that it will soon be possible to design effective synthetic vaccines on the basis of our knowledge of the molecules involved in immunological interactions. It seems to me that this claim arises from an unwarranted faith in the power of a reductionist approach for solving complex biological problems. Such a claim does not take into account that the protection against disease that can be achieved by vaccination is a... 

D.A. Palmer, M.T. French, and J.N. Miller, Lise of protein A as an immunological reagent and its application using flow injection a review. Analyst 119, 2769-2776 (1994). 

Silk fibers or monolayers of silk proteins have a number of potential biomedical applications. Biocompatibility tests have been carried out with scaffolds of fibers or solubilized silk proteins from the silkworm Bombyx mori (for review see Ref. [38]). Some biocompatibility problems have been reported, but this was probably due to contamination with residual sericin. More recent studies with well-defined silkworm silk fibers and films suggest that the core fibroin fibers show in vivo and in vivo biocompatibility that is comparable to other biomaterials, such as polyactic acid and collagen. Altmann et al. [39] showed that a silk-fiber matrix obtained from properly processed natural silkworm fibers is a suitable material for the attachment, expansion and differentiation of adult human progenitor bone marrow stromal cells. Also, the direct inflammatory potential of silkworm silk was studied using an in vitro system [40]. The authors claimed that their silk fibers were mostly immunologically inert in short and long term culture with murine macrophage cells. 

Komschlies, K.L., Grzegorzewski, K.J., and Wiltrout, R.H. 1995. Diverse immunological and haematological effects of interleukin-7 implications for clinical application. Journal of Leukocyte Biology 58, 623-631. 

Few substances have had a greater positive impact upon human healthcare management than antibodies, vaccines and adjuvants. For most of this century, these immunological agents have enjoyed widespread medical application, predominantly for the treatment/prevention of infectious diseases. As a group, they are often referred to as biologies (Chapter 1). 

Antibodies have and likely will find additional use in transplantation-related medicine. In general, cell-mediated immunological mechanisms are responsible for mediating rejection of transplanted organs. In many instances, transplant patients must be maintained on immunosuppressive drugs (e.g. some steroids and, often, the fungal metabolite cyclosporine). However, complications may arise if a rejection episode is encountered that proves unresponsive to standard immunosuppressive therapy. Orthoclone OKT-3 was the first monoclonal antibody-based product to find application in this regard. 

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