Immune System’s Rules Of Engagement Discovered By Researchers

May 27, 2014

Image Caption: Stanford School of Medicine researchers, working with scientists at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, have made discoveries about the ways in which T cell receptors (shown in bright red) recognize invaders in the body. Credit: Eric Smith & K. Christopher Garcia

By Glenn Roberts Jr., Stanford University

A study led by researchers at Stanfords School of Medicine reveals how T cells, the immune systems foot soldiers, respond to an enormous number of potential health threats.

X-ray studies at the Department of Energys SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, combined with Stanford biological studies and computational analysis, revealed remarkable similarities in the structure of binding sites, which allow a given T cell to recognize many different invaders that provoke an immune response.

The research demonstrates a faster, more reliable way to identify large numbers of antigens, the targets of the immune response, which could speed the discovery of disease treatments. It also may lead to a better understanding of what T cells recognize when fighting cancers and why they are triggered to attack healthy cells in autoimmune diseases such as diabetes and multiple sclerosis.

Until now, it often has been a real mystery which antigens T cells are recognizing; there are whole classes of disease where we dont have this information, said Michael Birnbaum, a graduate student who led the research at the School of Medicine in the laboratory of K. Christopher Garcia, the studys senior author and a professor of molecular and cellular physiology and of structural biology.

Now its far more feasible to take a T cell that is important in a disease or autoimmune disorder and figure out what antigens it will respond to, Birnbaum said.

T cells are triggered into action by protein fragments, called peptides, displayed on a cells surface. In the case of an infected cell, peptide antigens from a pathogen can trigger a T cell to kill the infected cell. The research provides a sort of rulebook that can be used with high success to track down antigens likely to activate a given T cell, easing a bottleneck that has constrained such studies.

Combination approach

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Immune System's Rules Of Engagement Discovered By Researchers