Publications by authors named "Alexa Semon"
Article Synopsis
- Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) poses a significant public health risk, with few prevention methods available.* -
- Researchers developed a multivalent mRNA-lipid nanoparticle vaccine that stimulates strong immune responses in various animal models, unaffected by gut microbiota changes.* -
- The vaccine effectively protects mice from severe CDI and enhances the elimination of harmful bacteria from the gut, highlighting mRNA-LNP technology as a potential new treatment avenue.*
Article Synopsis
- The mycobiota, the fungal component of gut microbiota, plays a crucial role in immune regulation and is linked to diseases like inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
- Researchers developed a platform to analyze mycobiome functionality at an individual patient level through advanced techniques such as fungal strain editing and immune response assays.
- They found diverse Candida albicans strains in IBD patients that can trigger inflammation and disease symptoms by damaging immune cells, revealing the importance of strain-specific interactions and offering potential new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches for inflammatory diseases.
Article Synopsis
- * The reasons why infants are commonly colonized without illness remain unclear, but the makeup of their gut microbiome plays a crucial role in this protection.
- * This review focuses on how the early-life microbiome might affect the likelihood of C. difficile infections in infants and whether adult microbiota traits influence early-life colonization.
Article Synopsis
- Antibodies help protect against viral and bacterial infections, but there are no effective vaccines or antibody treatments for fungal pathogens, which are a significant health concern.
- Using a new approach called multiKAP, researchers examined human antibodies targeting gut fungi and found that Candida albicans is a major trigger for antifungal antibodies (IgG).
- The production of these antifungal antibodies requires a specific immune pathway involving the CARD9 gene, and mutations in this gene can lead to reduced antibody responses in individuals suffering from invasive fungal infections like candidiasis.
Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) targeting gut microbiota has recently been successfully applied to ulcerative colitis. However, only a subset of patients responds to FMT, and there is a pressing need for biomarkers of responsiveness. Fungi (the mycobiota) represent a highly immunologically reactive component of the gut microbiota.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSensing of the gut microbiota, including fungi, regulates mucosal immunity. Whether fungal sensing in the gut can influence immunity at other body sites is unknown. Here we show that fluconazole-induced gut fungal dysbiosis has persistent effects on allergic airway disease in a house dust mite challenge model.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntestinal fungi are an important component of the microbiota, and recent studies have unveiled their potential in modulating host immune homeostasis and inflammatory disease. Nonetheless, the mechanisms governing immunity to gut fungal communities (mycobiota) remain unknown. We identified CX3CR1 mononuclear phagocytes (MNPs) as being essential for the initiation of innate and adaptive immune responses to intestinal fungi.
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