B cells, the source of damaging autoantibodies, have long been thought to depend upon T cells for their activation and were not considered important in the initiation of autoimmune diseases like lupus or rheumatoid arthritis.

A St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital study shows that T cells, the body’s master immune regulators, do not use simple on/off switches to govern the cellular machinery that regulates their development and function.

An increased expression of FoxP3 mRNA and a higher frequency of CD25+ regulatory cells were found in all patients who responded to cytapheresis but this was not found in a nonresponder patient. Variations in TGF-beta (mRNA) did not parallel those of FoxP3 mRNA. It is suggested that the quantification of FoxP3 in CD4+ T cells of treated patients may be used as a valuable index in these conditions.

When faced with cancer, the immune system dispatches cells, called T cells, to kill the tumor. But these killer cells often fail to completely eliminate the tumor because they’re deactivated by a distinct population of T cells known as regulatory T cells.

Researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) have uncovered a new way to develop more effective tumor vaccines by turning off the suppression function of regulatory T cells.

For immune cells known as T cells to be effective they must home to the site of an infection. Similarly, for T cells to inappropriately mount an immune response and cause diseases such as colitis they must traffic to the site of the disease.

Scientists have provided the first large-scale study of proteins inside human cells called Jurkat T cells. The study could provide a better understanding of how proteins inside a specific type of cell work together and may pave the way for future detailed studies of how proteins work in other types of cells.