OHSU researchers make key immune system discover.

2003 JAN 1 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- A key discovery about the immune system's skill in fighting off harmful disease-causing germs may lead to the ability to boost the immune systems of the elderly and otherwise susceptible, and offer more effective vaccines for the flu or AIDS.

"This research is of particular interest to populations that are highly vulnerable to disease, such as the aging population," said Janko Nikolich-Zugich, MD, PhD, a senior scientist at the Oregon Health & Science University Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute, who led the research.

Nikolich-Zugich continued, "We are currently facing the annual flu season where seniors are at a particularly higher risk than the rest of the population. In fact, the majority of the 20,000 people who die each year because of the flu are over 65 years of age. We hope that years down the road, this research finding will help us boost the immune systems of the elderly, reducing this staggering number of deaths."

Nikolich-Zugich and colleagues, writing in Science, uncovered this finding by working with a mouse model to study T-cells, specialized white blood cells that can fight off infection when a disease-causing pathogen is detected. Their research not only provides significant information about the workings of the body's immune system, it also points to the ways the body efficiently gets rid of pathogens and recovers from infection.

Specifically, the researchers used mice infected with the herpes simplex virus to look at the quality of the T-cell response against the virus. They concentrated on molecules that sit on the surface of infected cells and alert T-cells. These molecules are part of the major histocompatability complex (MHC) system, a key component of the body's immune defense system.

"The MHC molecules have two roles. First, they act like the traffic cops in the body. They look for invaders and, once they find them, they call in ...