Using a super-resolution fluorescent microscope, medical scientists are a step closer to understanding why and how human immune cells decide to activate or not, thus enabling or preventing disease taking hold in the body. Professor Katharina Gaus and her team at the Centre for Vascular Research based at UNSW’s Lowy Cancer Research Centre used some of the most advanced super-resolution optical microscope technology available anywhere in the world to see changes in individual proteins in T-cells – the workhorse of our immune system.