The signs of our body's immune system kick into action when we have a sore throat, for example. Immune responses are driven by a complex array of cellular processes that can play out over a number of days.
There's a lot of information about the immune responses. Finding a needle in a haystack is what finding a treatment or vaccine is like because of the number of variables involved. A new study published in Science may change this. It looked at the role of the immune system's cytokines in signaling.
The role of the messenger.
The immune system is called a battle. Critical white blood cells travel through the bloodstream and into tissues to look for traces of invaders. To avoid attacking healthy cells indiscriminately, T cells circulate until they recognize a specific antigen, and then send out messenger in the form of cytokines to signal that all is not well.
The number of T cells produced to fight the invaders might vary, or the number of invaders themselves, according to Paul Franois. What really matters is the strength of the immune system.
The numbers help figure out essentials.
It has been difficult to measure the strength of a T cell's immune system because of the amount of the antigens present.
Franois and his colleagues have been able to decipher the highly variable phenomenon of cytokine production by using a data-driven approach. Predicting how well a vaccine candidate might work is very useful.
The researchers at the National Cancer Institute developed a robotic platform to perform dozens of experiments at the same time. The automated system in the Altan-Bonnet lab was improved by a graduate student in order to gather more data in less time.
Altan-Bonnet pointed out that "Assembling a comprehensive map of the dynamics of cytokines generated by T cells in very diverse settings presents a challenge and an opportunity to better understand how T cells'see' the antigenic world.
Machine learning and mathematical models were used by the team to process the data from the experiments. Surprisingly simple rules at the heart of the process were revealed by this data-driven modeling.
There is a spectrum of immune reactions.
Patterns of cytokine release carried information about the type of antigen encountered and six different cellular responses, rather than the three types usually recognized.
Franois says that it supports the idea that immune responses exist along a spectrum. Depending on the complexity of the situation, different levels of immune response can be adjusted.
T cells engineered to target the tumors of a patient are likely to be enhanced by this new understanding.
More information: Sooraj R. Achar et al, Universal antigen encoding of T cell activation from high-dimensional cytokine dynamics, Science (2022). DOI: 10.1126/science.abl5311 Journal information: Science
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