At the moment, anti-inflammatory treatments do not seem to work in advanced human cancers, but over the past 10 years or so rapid advances in immunotherapy have taught us that we can harness the power of the more specific and sophisticated
adaptive immune system to fight cancer, even when the cancer is in its final and most lethal stages.
The more sophisticated
adaptive immune system present in higher organisms relies predominantly on CD4 and CD8 positive T cells, which help the immune response and drive cell-mediated immunity respectively, and antibody-producing B cells, which drive the humoral response, to specifically identify and target the pathogen for removal, leading to a highly efficient and specific response.
The
adaptive immune system acts slower than the innate immune system but mounts a more specific, powerful attack against pathogens using specialized immune system cells called T cells.
More importantly, as a key mediator of the
adaptive immune system, T cells modulate various autoimmune diseases and protect organisms from infections and malignancies [63].
In tests on mouse cells, the researchers found that when cancer cells are stressed by an experimental anti-CD47 immunotherapy, the cancer cells leak DNA into nearby dendritic cells, which present antigens to killer T-cells and are considered a bridge between the innate and
adaptive immune systems.
In the past few decades, research on vitamin D has shown that there are important interactions between vitamin D and cells from the innate as well as from the
adaptive immune system. From the data available it can be seen that a variety of tissue cells, including immune cells, express vitamin D metabolising enzymes, are providing a biologically plausible mechanism for local, auto- and paracrine conversion of the native circulating forms, to the active form calcitriol.
Wiedenheft, CRISPR-mediated
adaptive immune systems in bacteria and archaea.
The immune system as we now understand it has two main arms, referred to as the innate immune system and the
adaptive immune system. The innate immune system consists of specialized cells and proteins in the body that have the ability to fight infection per se, but little to no ability to distinguish the specific germ causing the infection.
The viruses even down-modulate the
adaptive immune system in clever ways that result in fewer potentially protective cytotoxic lymphocytes that kill viruses making their way to the nose, and fewer T cells that discharge cytokines that promote a necessary inflammatory response to clear both bacteria and viruses from the nose and fewer B cells that become plasma cells and release antibodies into the nose.
This rapid attack gives the body's
adaptive immune system time to generate antibodies that specifically target the virus or bacterium.