Lead Image: The image shows the unusual, flexible arrangement of the γδ TCR versus the αβ TCR. The B-cell receptor is expressed by antibody-making B-cells.
An international collaboration, involving researchers from the laboratories of Professor Jamie Rossjohn at Monash University in Australia, and Professor Simon Davis at the MRC Translational Immune Discovery Unit here in Oxford, has led to a breakthrough in our understanding of how immune responses are started. The resulting study has just been published in Nature.
The human immune system comprises multiple important white blood cells (i.e., lymphocytes) including B cells and T cells that fight off infections and cancers. Basic discoveries leading to an understanding of how lymphocytes function have led to the development of immunotherapies and vaccines.
There are two types of T cells in humans, called αβ T-cells and γδ T-cells, each of which expresses on their surfaces an αβ T-cell receptor (TCR) or a γδ TCR, respectively. In 1957, Frank Macfarlane Burnet, a famous Australian immunologist, predicted the existence of these receptors and speculated that they would “trigger” clonal lymphocyte expansions, producing enough cells to fight off infections. We now recognize that TCRs have the pivotal role of recognising molecules derived from foreign pathogens or tumours. While less is known about γδ T-cells than αβ T-cells, γδ T-cells are emerging as key players in immune defence and are becoming increasingly important for immunotherapy.
Read the full story on the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine.