A NEW insight into how the immune system avoids attacking the body鈥檚 own
tissues could eventually help doctors to treat autoimmune diseases, say
researchers at the DNAX Research Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology in
Palo Alto, California. They have discovered a new way that the immune system
prevents killer T cells, which normally destroy foreign antigens, from attacking
鈥渟elf鈥� antigens.
The team says in this week鈥檚 Nature (vol 389, p 737) that when
activated T cells are exposed to an antigen as well as the chemical messenger
interleukin-10, they learn to produce their own interleukin-10 the next time
they meet the same antigen. Because interleukin-10 suppresses the activity of
the T cells, this mechanism creates tolerance.
One day, such cells could be cloned and injected into people with autoimmune
diseases. 鈥淏ut we still have a long way to go,鈥� says Herv茅 Groux, one of
the team.
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