Subduing the Storm

When your immune system is needed, its soldiers patrolling your body must receive the signal to spring into action. This alarm signal triggers the production of cytokines – small proteins that prompt the defence cells to proliferate and tackle the particular problem. But we haven’t quite deciphered this coded call to arms. New research has shown how the formation of a network of actin filaments in the immune cell nucleus – pictured 30 seconds after cell stimulation – regulates cytokine production. This discovery not only decodes a key step in our regular immune response to the threats of the world, but may also help cancer patients receiving immunotherapy. Immunotherapy treatment harnesses the patient’s own immune system to subdue cancer, but can cause harmful ‘cytokine storms’ when an overzealous immune system produces cytokines at an unmanageable rate. This cytokine-regulating network could be the key to keeping things under control.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image from work by N. Tsopoulidis and colleagues
• Department of Infectious Diseases, Integrative Virology, CIID, University Hospital Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany
• Image copyright held by the original authors. Published on the cover of Science Immunology 18 Jan 2019
• Research published in Science Immunology, January 2019