July 18, 2001

      Researchers from the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, led by Dr. Andrew Caton, recently announced that they have identified for the first time how the body creates a specialized type of cell that plays a key role in preventing the immune system from turning against the body own health cells. The finding, published in Nature Immunology, suggests that engineering different types of regulatory T cells in the laboratory could become a future strategy for combating autoimmune diseases. T cells are the white blood cells that are important in controlling infections. Previously reported was the fact that as much as 10 percent of T cells in a normal animal are regulatory T cells, indicating their importance as a safeguard against autoimmunity.

      The researchers said that the body immune system generates "regulatory T cells" which are pivotal in preventing the body from attacking itself. They stated that these regulatory T cells are finely tuned toward the recognition of the body own proteins, or "self," and that a failure to make a complete array of these cells may be an important factor in the development of autoimmune diseases. Dr. Caton commented, "What interesting about these regulatory T cells is that, although their purpose is to prevent autoimmunity, they themselves react against elf." He added, "However, their properties have been changed so that, instead of responding to stimulation by dividing and directing the elimination of infected cells, as a normal T cell does, they instead suppress the local immune response."