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Towards Engineering and Adjusting the Immune System
(Friday June 26 2009)
 | This ScienceDaily release gives some insight into how we might manipulate and repair our aging immune systems in the near future: "During their development in the thymus gland, a kind of 'T-cell school', every T-cell is fitted out with its own personal receptor. The diversity of these receptors allows the immune system to respond to nearly all pathogens. Since T-cell receptors are all randomly constructed, there is also a constant production of T-cells in the thymus that may recognize and attack the body's own structures. ... Most of these dangerous autoreactive T-cells, though, are sorted out in a screening process before they leave the thymus ... But not all autoreactive T-cells are driven to cell death. Some of them are 'reeducated' into so-called regulatory T-cells. While these still possess a T-cell receptor that targets the body's own structures, they have been reprogrammed during their development in the thymus so that they can no longer cause any damage. In fact, it is [quite the opposite]. ... They even keep other nearby errant T -cells under control. This is why the mechanisms for the creation of regulatory T-cells are of enormous practical interest. Deciphering these processes could lead to new therapeutic approaches for autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, rheumatic arthritis and type-1 diabetes, which are triggered by autoreactive T-cells." |
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