Hitting the brakes: how PD-1 stops T cells from fighting
PD-1 is part of a group of proteins that helps promote balance during an immune response. Together, these are known as immune checkpoints. These “break” proteins help decrease the function of our T cell soldiers, which is good as we don’t want our great fighters killing when there is nothing to kill.
I’m not lazy, it’s called selective participation – Explaining T cell anergy
Our internal mechanism of defence (known as the immune system) is made of many different cell types that together help protect us against infections and cancer. Today we are talking (again) about my favourite cell type, called T cell. To do their job, they need to receive specific signals allowing them to be activated and ready to […]
Recognize, remove, remember and repeat: a step-by-step guide to an immune response
Every single day for the past month (at least), we have been hearing a lot about the ability of our body to fight infection. This high influx of information can be overwhelming and confusing. So in this post, I decided to go back to the basics. Now that we know about the “location” of the immune system…
Our natural internal fighters
More than ever, we are being bombarded with information about our body’s natural ability to fight infections. In the past few months, concepts such as herd immunity, antibodies and immunological memory, to name a few, have been slowly added to our vocabulary.
