WIKIMEDIA, HELENA PAFFENA staggering 20 billion or so memory T cells are part of the immune cell repertoire of human skin, defending the host from a multitude of infectious agents. And now, those skin memory T cells have been analyzed and categorized in a paper published today (March 18) in Science Translational Medicine.
This paper is “a critical and groundbreaking redefinition of the cutaneous immune system,” dermatologist James Krueger of Rockefeller University in New York City, who was not involved in the work, wrote in an e-mail to The Scientist.
Memory T cells are part of the adaptive immune system, and “historically, we’ve learned about adaptive [T cell] responses by studying these cells in the organs of the immune system itself, such as the lymph nodes,” said immunologist David Masopust of the University of Minnesota. That’s because it was long presumed that although T cells visited the body’s peripheral tissues, they ultimately circulated back to the lymph nodes, he explained. But recent evidence has revealed that some T cells reside in the peripheral tissues forever. “They come in ...
