Immunity system complexity: special T cells im cornea (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, August 23, 2023, 19:39 (248 days ago) @ David Turell

A new technique found them:

https://www.the-scientist.com/news/specialized-t-cells-patrol-human-cornea-71296

"The consensus about innate immune cells in the cornea was based on in vivo confocal microscopy (IVCM), the current gold standard static imaging technique.3 However, IVCM has a few limitations, according to Chinnery. To better understand the cornea and its immune cells, Chinnery and her coauthor Laura Downie pioneered a new technique for dynamic corneal imaging: functional in vivo confocal microscopy (Fun-IVCM).

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"...the authors performed Fun-IVCM on healthy human subjects and compared the morphology and behavior of the cells they videoed with those they found in mice. The movement and morphology of the cells was akin to the T cells seen in mouse corneas following viral infection.

"Next, they performed Fun-IVCM on individuals before and after they were exposed to inflammatory stimuli, demonstrating the response of the corneal cell populations to the inflammation. Acute inflammatory stimuli in the form of contact lens application reduced the number of T cells in the cornea. Chronic inflammation in the form of untreated ocular allergy did not affect the number of T cells, but it enhanced their motility.

"Jeremías Galletti, an ophthalmologist and ocular immunologist at the National Academy of Medicine of Buenos Aires who was not involved in the study, said that the findings are very convincing. “This is a great paper. We usually think of the cornea as an immune-privileged organ, and that the rules of immunology are different there. But now, [the authors] have found that in healthy human subjects, we have T cells entering and leaving the cornea all the time,” Galletti commented."

Comment: T cells are jacks of all trades. This means they carry instructions for many differing tasks, as would happen by purposeful design in their DNA.