Researchers at the University’s Medical School who have published their findings in the journal Nature Communications looked at how immune system cells, which are essential to fighting infection and preventing diseases like cancer, use their metabolic pathways when they are activated in the laboratory.
Researchers at the University’s Medical School who have published their findings in the journal Nature Communications looked at how immune system cells, which are essential to fighting infection and preventing diseases like cancer, use their metabolic pathways when they are activated in the laboratory.
When these infection and cancer fighting cells, known as CD4+ T cells, are challenged, they make enough energy to fuel their important cellular functions and to create biosynthetic building blocks to divide and increase to respond to challenges like an infection.
The researchers found that the cells do this by taking up nutrients and processing them through cellular metabolic pathways. When the cells are activated, they reprogram their metabolic pathways in order to provide the energy and building blocks needed to carry out their function.
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