New Nano Device Detects Immune System Cell Signaling, Vanderbilt University Study

ScienceDaily (Sep. 10, 2008) — Scientists have detected previously unnoticed chemical signals that individual cells in the immune system use to communicate with each other over short distances. The signals the researchers detected originated in dendritic cells – the sentinels of the immune system that do the initial detection of microscopic invaders – and were received by nearby T-cells, which play a number of crucial roles in the immune system, including coordination of attacks on agents that cause disease or infection.