Tested: A Reboot for the Immune System

[n2doc]

The ability to reprogram the immune system is one of the most sought-after goals in medicine. Now researchers are closer than ever to pulling it off in patients with Type 1 diabetes, one of whom happens to be our correspondent
By Catherine PricePosted 03.15.2010 at 9:46 am

A sign rests on the windowsill in the office of Jeffrey Bluestone, director of the Immune Tolerance Network and the Diabetes Center at the University of California at San Francisco. Measuring nearly three feet across, it reads “Club Bluestone” in pink and blue neon. It’s the sort of artifact you’d expect to find in a bar. But Bluestone is a world-renowned immunobiologist; his father-in-law had the sign made for him in the late 1980s when Bluestone was working long hours in his lab at the University of Chicago. As the night wore on and their energy faded, he and his colleagues would turn out the lights, turn on the sign and, propelled by the power of Bruce Springsteen, push forward with their research. “It was our version of partying,” he says.

Bluestone has worked in that lab and ones like it for almost 30 years, wrestling with one of the most vexing problems in medicine: how to keep the immune system from attacking the body itself. It’s been a challenging three decades. Immune researchers work on a biological defense system that’s comparable to the world’s greatest military. This military has millions of potential enemies but no clear leader; instead its members are on constant patrol, a hair trigger away from launching an attack. It’s a recipe for anarchy. Yet the majority of the time, the immune system knows when to hold back. Using processes we still don’t fully understand, a healthy person’s immune system is able to draw a clear line between the body’s own tissues, which it leaves untouched, and invaders, which it identifies and destroys.

The immune system can also be devastatingly destructive. The body’s tendency to reject organ transplants, attacking them as if they were dangerous foreign invaders, is well known. But more prevalent are autoimmune diseases, in which your immune cells attack your own tissues and organs. Left unchecked, these malfunctions can result in one of more than 80 known conditions, including Type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease and psoriasis. According to the Autoimmune Related Diseases Association, conditions like these affect more than 50 million Americans.

more:

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-02/rebooting-body