How Lymph Nodes Expand During Disease
Wednesday, October 22, 2014 - 17:50
in Health & Medicine
A new paper finds that the same specialized immune cells that patrol the body and spot infections also trigger the expansion of the immune organs known as lymph nodes. The immune system defends the body from infections but can also spot and destroy cancer cells and lymph nodes are at the heart of this response, but it was unclear how they expand during disease. Researchers at Cancer Research UK's London Research Institute found that when a type of immune cell known as dendritic cells recognizes a threat, they make a molecule called CLEC-2 that tells the cells lining the lymph nodes to stretch out and expand to allow for an influx of disease fighting cells. read more