Nacario's Digital Scrapbook

• Researchers have come out to say that they have been able to use 2 different types of noninvasive probes to define the roles played by different cell types in the immune system.
• One probe called FDG is used in PET scans to observe how cells break down glucose. The other probe called FAC is sent to see the activity of cells in certain biochemical passages. These probes are hoped to help doctors determine how to treat specific cells in the immune system
  
• The study shows that the probes target certain cells with high specificity. The FDG probe detects a macrophage for example while the FAC detects lymphocytes or cells that lead the immune response to kill infected or cancerous cells.
• These probes are being used in mice and hopefully humans soon to evaluate how the immune system responds to diseases like arthritis, inflammatory bowl disease, and sclerosis.
• This article relates to our Immune System unit because it talks about how scientists are trying to get a better understanding of the immune system specifically. We know in class how the immune system works to protect out bodies but we do not know how specifically the immune system responds to different diseases.

It is interesting of how far along technology has come to see that a probe can go inside a living being and detect specific cells. I think that if we can continue this research, we can be able to get a better learning experience on how the immune system works. We have a bird's eye view from class in which a pathogen is detected and the whole body acts upon it. If we covered the same topic 20 years from now, we can have an overview but we can also have a specific disease to focus on and see what cell reacts to the disease.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/img/health/immune060505.jpg