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Your immune system is a mean, lean, health-protecting machine. You probably learned more about its prowess as the COVID-19 pandemic wore on, and you likely remember how it feels when your immune system is hard at work fending off viral and bacterial attacks. All in all, the full might of your immune system does a good job of putting pathogens in their ideal place – namely, outside your cells.
But sometimes, your immune system turns its power against your own cells, resulting in autoimmune conditions like rheumatoid arthritis and Type 1 diabetes. How does your immune system know where, when and what to fight against?
The answer is a Nobel Prize-winning one – regulatory T cells, or Tregs for short.
As the name implies, Tregs play a key role in modulating how your immune system responds to everything that brushes up against it – from pathogens and allergens to transplanted organs. Immunologist Aimee Pugh Bernard of the University of Colorado Anschutz explains that Tregs enable immune tolerance – the ability to distinguish between “self” and “nonself.” And understanding how this process works can lead to new treatments.
“Continuing to unlock the secrets of immune regulation can help lead to a future where the immune system can be precisely tuned like a thermostat – whether to turn it down in autoimmunity or rev it up against cancer,” Bernard writes.
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Regulatory T cells (red) interact with other immune cells (blue) and modulate immune responses.
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases/NIH via Flickr
Aimee Pugh Bernard, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
Regulatory T cells help your immune system distinguish between ‘self’ and ‘nonself’ – and can open doors to better treatments for cancer, autoimmune disease and transplant rejection.
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Economy + Business
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Rohan Shah, University of Mississippi; Institute for Humane Studies
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Arts + Culture
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Aaron Mansfield, Merrimack College
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Politics + Society
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Donald Nieman, Binghamton University, State University of New York
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Graham G. Dodds, Concordia University
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Timothy R. Holbrook, University of Denver
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International
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David Lees, University of Warwick
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Education
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Cynthia Lindquist, University of North Dakota
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Health + Medicine
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Wendy Netter Epstein, DePaul University; Christopher Robertson, Boston University
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David Higgins, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
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Ethics + Religion
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Richard J. Callahan, Jr., Gonzaga University
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