It’s a dangerous world out there. Between swine flu, war, hurricanes, and giant earthquakes,
it’s a miracle that any of us stay alive. But even if you manage to survive all that, the most unexpected foe could attack you: your own body.
Autoimmune diseases: They take place when your own immune system starts chipping away at your cells instead of just the intruders.
So how do you stop your own body from Benedict Arnolding you?
Let Dr. John Cambier take care of that.
Cambier and his team were awarded a $498,000 grant from the NIH to work on understanding the mechanisms of immunity and autoimmunity—and how we can control them.
“We’re studying a process called anergy,” Cambier said. “The process has to do something with those cells [that attack the body], silences them, and has them participate in immune response or else they’ll cause an autoimmune disease.”
“Just understanding how the system works will help us understand why it doesn’t work, and how people develop autoimmunity,” Cambier said.
The hope is that, if researchers can control that system, you can scratch “your body pulling a Brutus” off of your worries list—and God knows that’s already long enough.
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