Licence to kill (original) (raw)

Immunology

Nature volume 393, pages 413–414 (1998)Cite this article

When the body's own cells become infected, the immune system can take the extreme step of killing them to preserve the rest of the organism. It is no surprise that this potentially dangerous mechanism has to be kept under strict control, and on pages 4741, 4782 and 4803 of this issue, three groups suggest a new mechanism by which this control operates.

The need for helpers and the nature of this help have intrigued immunologists for years. The first model (Fig. 1b) suggested that T-helper and T-killer cells recognize their specific antigens simultaneously on the same APC, and that cytokines (such as interleukin-2) produced by the activated T-helper cell would act on the T killer and facilitate its response4,5. Although interleukin-2 can substitute for helper cells in some systems, there are two main problems with this model. First, it requires that two rare antigen-specific cells meet on the same antigen-bearing APC — an event that has an extremely low probability. Second, and more importantly, some killer responses can be elicited in the absence of helper cells6, implying that the need for help is conditional rather than absolute.

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Figure 1: Antigen-presenting cells (APCs) need a licence to help T-killer cells.

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  1. the Basel Institute for Immunology, Grenzacherstrasse 487, CH 4005, Basel, Switzerland
    Antonio Lanzavecchia

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  1. Antonio Lanzavecchia
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Lanzavecchia, A. Licence to kill.Nature 393, 413–414 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/30845

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