A safety switch that automatically stops the device for example before it overheats are built into many electrical appliances. The body’s cells are also equipped with this kind of "emergency stop" functions. They make sure that a defective cell doesn’t grow uncontrollably, becoming a tumor cell. A team from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has now discovered such a switch in immune cells, the T cells. In the future it will be possible to use these results in new therapies for the treatment of T cell Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma triggered by defective immune cells.
In the body T cells are usually responsible for immediately detecting and killing cancer cells. ...
