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The immune system is constantly performing surveillance to detect foreign organisms that might do harm. But pathogens, for their part, have evolved a number of strategies to evade this detection, such as secreting proteins that hinder a host’s ability to mount an immune response. In a new study, a team of researchers has identified a "back-up alarm" system in host cells that responds to a pathogen’s attempt to subvert the immune system.
The findings address the longstanding question of how a host can generate an immune response to something that is designed to shut off that very response. A potential future application of this new understanding may enable the cell-death pathway triggered by bacteria to be harnessed in order to target tumor cells and encourage their demise.Image credit: Igor Brodsky/University of Pennsylvania
