Increased survival from stage IV melanoma associated with fewer regulatory T Cells.

Background: Melanoma often elicits a profound immune response, and this response has been exploited by various immune therapies. These immunotherapies ultimately fail, however, and advanced melanoma is uniformly fatal, suggesting the development of an immune escape mechanism. In this study, markers of immune escape including regulatory T cells (T(regs)), dendritic cells (DCs), and TGF-beta were evaluated in 14 Stage IV melanoma patients and correlated with survival.

Functional and genomic changes induced by alveolar transmigration in human neutrophils.

Although the accumulation of neutrophils in the lungs and airways is common to many inflammatory lung diseases, including acute lung injury, the alterations that neutrophils undergo as they leave the peripheral circulation and migrate into the lungs have not been well characterized. Human volunteers were exposed to endotoxin by bronchoscopic instillation. The resulting air space neutrophil accumulation and peripheral blood neutrophils were isolated 16 h later, compared with circulating neutrophils isolated before or after to the pulmonary endotoxin exposure, and compared with circulating neutrophils exposed to endotoxin in vitro.