Konstantin Cao, from the National School of Public Health, Beijing School of Medicine, China, says that the findings could have “huge public health implications” and “may open the way for new ways to develop more effective vaccines and treatments.”

“It demonstrates again how the immune system plays a major role in the disease”, says Cao. “This study highlights how vaccine development requires identifying novel vaccine methods, which includes understanding the immune cell repertoire of patients, their risk factors, and developing and testing vaccines.”

Dr Thomas Mok, Head of the Infectious Diseases Division, National School of Pharmacy and Toxicology, Imperial College London, UK, says, “This study opens up some of the next most promising vaccine candidates, including those targeting multiple T cells and those targeting a number of T cell subtypes. Together, these novel vaccines could potentially eliminate or limit the morbidity of immune-mediated diseases and potentially help cure some disorders.”

In August 2015, researchers in the USA published findings from a study showing that T cells can be programmed to spread from the lungs to the muscle. The results were recently published in the journal Science.

The research was done by Dr T.T. Wong et al (Cancer Research UK). The study found that T cells could be induced to attack a patient’s own lung tissue (an “oncogene”), causing the cells to spread the cancer from the body to the lung.

“The findings also suggest that the presence of oncogene-driven T-cell response in the lungs of patients with lung cancer would likely be linked to both the number and severity of the associated cancer growth”, says Dr Wong.

Lead author, Professor Gage N. Wong, Ph.D., of University of Florida, Gainesville, says the study illustrates how, by using T cells, researchers can track the progression of lung cancer and can prevent it.

“Cancer is a complex disease of the immune system,” says Wong. “Our study has uncovered a mechanism that allows immune cells to become part of the cancer process. Our next challenge is to identify therapeutic avenues to help cancer patients fight this disease.”

“For decades the study of lymphatic systems in the immune system has been neglected,” says Professor David Beasley, from University College London, England, and University Hospital, London. “However, with the advent of modern molecular techniques we now understand just how crucial the immune system can be for