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Baylor College of Medicine
Dendritic cells spark smoldering inflammation in smokers' lungs
November 11th, 2009
Inflammation still ravages the lungs of some smokers years after they quit the habit. What sparks that smoldering destruction remained a mystery until a consortium of researchers led by Baylor College of Medicine found that certain dendritic cells in the lung - the cells that "present" a foreign antigen or protein to the immune system - provoke production of destructive T-cells that attack a key protein called elastin, leading to death of lung tissue and emphysema. A report of their work appears in the current issue of Science Transformational Medicine. The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute estimates that 2 million Americans have emphysema, most of them over the...
Source: Immunotherapy Weekly (2009-11-11)
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