U.S. researchers say that human immune systems are more similar than previously believed, a finding that could lead to new ways to detect, diagnose and treat cancer and autoimmune diseases.
The team from the Cancer Research Center Fred Hutchinson in Seattle created a new way to sequence millions of T-cell receptor of the immune system of a single sample. Recipient T cells are a critical part of the adaptive immune system responsible for protecting against new pathogens.
When the researchers used this technique to compare the immune systems of different people, I was surprised to find many similarities. “We found that any two people can share tens of thousands of the same exact type of T cell receptors. This contradicts the established dogma that every person has a unique set of T cell receptors with little or no overlap between people” , said in a news release from the center Harlan Robins, the study’s corresponding author, biologist and computer assistant member of the Division of Public Health Sciences in Hutchinson.
“The intense similarity between the adaptive immune cells between different people suggests that the same disease will produce the same response in different people. The technology described in this article can provide early detection of a response like this, even if the magnitude of the immune response is small. Therefore, we could potentially use one or more of these shared T cell responses as a diagnostic for a particular disease, “said Robins.
The study, published in the September 1 issue of Science Translational Medicine, has implications for cancer and autoimmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis, the researchers believe.
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