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Teaching Self-Defence
21 June 2012

Teaching Self-Defence

T cells – members of our body’s defence team – roam around detecting and killing infected or damaged cells. To make certain they don’t harm healthy tissue, they only inject their deadly poisons once there is a perfect match between their unique receptor [a protein on their surface] and markers on ‘corrupted’ cells. Cancer evades attack because it looks very similar to normal cells. So researchers have taken a patient’s T cells, genetically-modified their receptor so it can react with cancer and then returned them. This is a horizontal scan through the belly of a patient with advanced cancer (pelvic bones, and backbone at the bottom of scan in white). The cancer (circled in yellow) seen before T cell treatment (top) cannot be detected two years later (bottom). Although good news, it doesn’t work every time so researchers are working on how to optimise the T cell receptor for each patient.

Written by Claire Worrall

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BPoD stands for Biomedical Picture of the Day. Managed by the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences until Jul 2023, it is now run independently by a dedicated team of scientists and writers. The website aims to engage everyone, young and old, in the wonders of biology, and its influence on medicine. The ever-growing archive of more than 4000 research images documents over a decade of progress. Explore the collection and see what you discover. Images are kindly provided for inclusion on this website through the generosity of scientists across the globe.

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