Loophole in the immune system or cells playing silly buggers

[Gabes-Apg]

Tex
as per our discussion over the weekend - as to whether our sophisticated immune system could have a fault
maybe this research result may be linked to the outcome of the other study - maybe the cells are tricking the immune system????



http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-11-12/s ... em/4366554

Scientists learn how cancer tricks immune system
Melbourne scientists say they have made a breakthrough in their research into how cancer cells can trick the body's immune system.


Researchers working with mice at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre say they have discovered a molecule that a cancer cell produces to convince the immune system that it poses no danger

Lead researcher Dr Dan Andrews says natural killer cells roam the body like a security team looking for disease.

They lock onto the surface of the molecule and if they find everything is fine, they move on.

"Cancer cells are capable... of over-expressing these locks on the surface of the system and they fool the natural killer cell into thinking everything is OK and that's how the cancer grows," he said.

Dr Andrews says it is a major step forward, but any application to cancer treatment is still a long way off.

"The next step is to look and see if this interaction is happening in humans," he said.

"All the work that we've done has been performed in mouse models."

There are hopes the finding could eventually lead to the development of new treatments to interrupt the deadly deception.

"It's taken us five years to get to this point and any translational effects that could flow through in the pipeline are at least 20, 25 years downstream from this," he said.

In collaboration with the University of Melbourne, the research has been funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council and by a foundation called Cancer Cure Australia, which helps fund junior researchers.

The research will be published in the scientific journal Nature Immunology.

[tex]

Mornin' Gabes,

IMO, "trickery" is always involved whenever the immune system fails to function as expected. You may recall that in my book (on pages 209-210) I discussed how T cells are produced, trained, and selected by the thymus. Since this process is so critical to the proper functioning of the immune system, rather than to to rephrase what I wrote in the book, I'll just quote it here:

The critical role played by the thymus
To prevent the immune system from attacking the body’s own cells, immune cells are trained to recognize self. The thymus is a very specialized organ in charge of producing and selecting T lymphocytes, (T cells). In the thymus, progenitor cells known as thymocytes are converted into T cells, and by a random generation process, they are each designed to attack a unique antigen. This conversion and training process is known as thymopoiesis.

In order to preserve recognition of self, epithelial cells in the thymus produce major proteins that mimic proteins from various organs from all over the body and the new T cells are exposed to these proteins. Any T cells that are found to attack the body’s own proteins, are eliminated in the thymus, by means of a programmed method of cell death (apoptosis).

It’s known that the function of the thymus peaks about the time of puberty, and as we age, its function continues to diminish and the organ tends to lose robustness. Research has shown that in conjunction with ageing, and particularly in conjunction with stress, various neuropeptides, hormones, and growth factors can influence the process of thymopoeisis.20

And then I went on to discuss how gut bacteria totally bypass the thymus and trick the immune system into believing that they are part of "self":

However, gut bacteria are somehow able to circumvent this process
By some means, they convince the immune system that they are also self, rather than foreign invaders. No one knows how they do this, but they are able to establish this recognition in the gut, where they live. This raises questions about the possibility of irregularities in the process, inspiring some researchers to speculate that this phenomenon might be implicated in the development of inflammatory bowel disease.21

How do gut bacteria dupe our immune system?
Obviously, they would have to present an illusion of self to the immune system. My best guess (and it’s nothing more than simply a guess) is that they may produce some type of enzyme, or some other type of protein, that mimics a recognizable enzyme or protein normally found in human intestinal tissue. This would effectively provide them with a free pass so that they would be ignored by the immune system, and allowed to do as they wish.

So yes, I definitely agree that certain organisms/cells are sophisticated enough that they are able to fabricate some sort of chemical marker that persuades our immune system to accept them as "self". This is just one more reason why I believe that MC (and all other autoimmune diseases) are the result of an "under-active" immune system, rather than an overactive immune system. Disease happens (or is allowed to happen) because certain foreign, or otherwise unqualified cells, are able to exploit vulnerabilities in the immune system's "firewall", similar to the way that computer system hackers exploit vulnerabilities in computer system security firewalls.

Here are the references cited in the above quotes:

20. Patel, K., & Taub, D. D. (2009). Role of neuropeptides, hormones, and growth factors in regulating thymopoiesis in middle to old age. F1000 Biology Reports, 1(1), 42. doi:10.3410/B1-42

21. Katsnelson, A. (2011, September 21). How microbes train our immune system [Web log message]. doi:10.1038/news.2011.550

Thanks for the research article,
Tex