Using T-cells To Boost The Immune System
Introduction:
We all have immune systems, it’s what keeps us alive. But what if we could boost our immune systems drastically. Our immune system consists of many cells, these cells form tissues which form organs, and organs make up organ systems. The function of an organ system depends on the integrated activity of its organs. Since cells are a crucial part of our immune system, making “fake” also known as synthetic versions of the most important cells will give an extreme boost to our system. In this article, I will explain how synthetic T-cells will boost our immune system, how it works, their applications, and how much potential it holds
What is your immune system:
Your immune system is a very complex thing to understand. From fighting bacteria, combating diseases, killing infected cells, keeping your organs and body alive each part of your immune system is very important. When you get a cut a lot of bacteria enters your body, that’s when your immune system comes in. Fighting bacteria is just one of the everyday things it does. Most of the time they are minor cuts where they release antibodies and increase blood flow. But what most people don’t recognize is the other millions of things your immune system does every day. Your body has infected cells whether you know it or not and we don’t recognize just how often your immune system fights things such as that. But the part of your immune system that we are here to talk about is your T-cells.
What are T-cells:
T-cells are very important cells for your body. There are many types of t-lymphocytes and they all have different jobs.
What are our T-cells made out of:
T-cells are made in the bone marrow along with red and white blood cells. Our T-cells mature in the thymus and that’s how they get the T part of their name. The thymus is located right above your heart and since most T-cells are made when you are young, kids can have bigger thymuses than adults. T-cells are made of two disulphide-linked polypeptide chains called A and B. The base of T-cells are lymphocytes that are derived from specific types of stem cells, called multipotent hematopoietic stem cells, from the bone marrow. That later is activated and matures over time.
- The first type of T-cell is a helper t-cell. A helper T-cell is a type of white blood cell and lymphocyte. It is also called a CD4-positive T lymphocyte. Helper T-cells coordinate with other cells to assist them with their job, they are required for almost all adaptive immune responses. Another example of what helper-Ts do is that they help activate B cells to secrete antibodies and macrophages. Helper T-cells also help other T-cells for example when cytotoxic T-cells need to kill infected cells they help activate them. As you can see helper T-cells are really important and without helper T-cells we can’t even defend ourselves from many microbes
2. When activated T-cells can become an effector cell. Effector cells are just cells that are involved in destroying pathogens and removing them from the body safely. Effector cells are generally short-lived and not a main type of T-cell.
3. Cytotoxic T-cells are the guns and bombs of T-cells. Cytotoxic means killer so these cells are also called killer T-cells. The job of killer T-cells is to target certain cells which harm the body but also make sure that the uninfected and unharmful cells are kept safe. Since there are certain harmful cells that don’t die off naturally, killer T-cells are essential to fighting them. Not only do they kill infected cells but killer T-cells kill much more than that. Killer T-cells are great for killing tumours like cancer. When it comes to killing cancer cells a very good cancer treatment is CAR T-cell therapy which harnesses and gives superpowers to T-cells to early target and kill tumours. You can read more here. Killer T-cells also recognize and kill other things such as bacteria, parasites, and fungi. Cytotoxic T-cells play the main role when it comes to protecting our bodies from harmful things.
4. Just like the previous T-cells regulatory T-cells also have the explanation in their name. Yep, it is exactly what it sounds like, the job of regulatory T-cells is to suppress our body’s immune response. They are a specialized subpopulation of T-cells that keep everything in our body in order. These cells keep all of our other cells in order by making sure that they are in perfect shape and in good health. These assist in preventing things such as autoimmune diseases. An autoimmune disease is when your body can not tell the difference between your cells and foreign cells that don’t belong there. What occurs is that your cells begin to attack each other so then our regulatory T-cells begin to secrete anti-inflammatory tolerogenic cytokines in order to keep everything in order.
5. Memory T-cells store a ton of knowledge and information about our immune system. Memory T-cells only present themselves after the “battle” is done. What this means is that after our body fights a bacteria for example it needs to remember how it fought it off in case it comes back again. This is what memory T-cells do. When you catch the flu your body works hard and takes days to fight it off and throughout the process, you don’t feel good. Well, memory T-cells help you in assuring that if you catch it again you won’t even know because they will remember how exactly your body fought that flu off so you won’t even know you caught it again. That’s why when you have already caught a certain type of flu and later on, your family catches it you won’t feel the same effects since your body already has the plan and strategies to kill it off.
As you can see all of your T-cells play a major part in your immune system and keeping your body alive. Synthetic T-cells are a new concept but the idea of using them to boost your immune system has much potential because having them will help you better fight all kinds of disease, infections and anything that may hold a threat to your body.
What are synthetic T-cells and how can they be used:
Synthetic means fake. In the science world, it is very hard to develop synthetic cells because even observing the cells once isolated is hard. Your cells can only survive for a limited amount of time outside your body due to the fact that it needs certain nutrients. Though scientists have materialized a way to keep them alive developing them still took long. Synthetic T-cells are made from many different substances and chemical systems. Synthetic T-cells are near perfect and evolutionary to the health world. Like I said synthetic T-cells can be used to boost the immune system. And what this means is that the more T-cells the better because they can come as a great advantage to everyone’s body. An increase in this will help your body fight a variety of diseases and increase healthspan.
Because of the fact that your cells hold so much potential and when you get older they die off synthetic cells like these T-cells are groundbreaking when it comes to longevity. Since synthetic cells are a near replica of T-cells they also can be used to study cells. What this means is that synthetic T-cells can allow scientists to deeply observe how the T-cells work. This information can and will be very useful and important to scientists in the research, medical and cancer field.
Why this is important:
As you see T-cells take a long time to develop, they have many functions and are very precise. This is why it was very hard to develop a synthetic version. Since we can’t replicate the thymus in a lab, you would have to find a way to mimic the system. As you read how they are built you can see how precise and cool the process is!
How they will be built:
To start and make the base form of T-cells two substances are combined. The first mineral oil by this I don’t mean the type of mineral oil you use to polish your floors, this kind of mineral oil is pure and sourced from varieties of minerals. The second substance is alginate biopolymer, biopolymer is a gum-like substance made from polysaccharides. The mineral oil and biopolymer are mixed with a microfluidic system. This in a sense ties it all together and manipulates the fluids to form the T-cells.
Once the T-cell has the proper physical properties they then need to develop the biological attributes. T-cells form was the easy part but now they need to be “activated” and mature to the point where they can actually perform the same way T-cells do. So a chemical process called bioconjugation is used where scientists link the T-cells to the CD4's. These particles activate natural T-cells to attack and kill things such as cancer cells.
What is a microfluidic system:
There are different types of microfluid systems. One is known as a microfluidic chip that controls certain technology reactions. Another useful type of microfluidic system is a technique used in research that rapidly replicates the substance for it to not die off. The type of microfluid system used here focuses on behaviour control to make sure nothing goes drastically wrong in one way or the other during the research. This also focuses on the manipulation of fluids but more on a smaller scale such as a submillimeter scale.
What is Biocunjunction:
But simply bioconjugation is a chemical strategy that forms a stable link/connection between two molecules in this case connects the CD4 signals with the synthetic T-cells. Bioconjugation can only work if what needs to be linked is able to work together and become linked.
What are CD4 signals:
A CD4 signal is a co-receptor of the T-cell. Its job is to activate all the many signals, proteins, antigens, and chemicals in T-cells. CD4 signalers are what allow these synthetic T-cells to be as unique as normal T-cells. These signals lead to the activation of transcription factors and assist the latter in communicating with antigen-presenting cells. These factors are in things such as NF-kB, NFAT, AP-1.
How this process can be useful:
A UCLA researcher mentioned how this similar process can also be used in the creation of other synthetic cells. Or be used to develop macrophages, for research on specific diseases or to help develop treatments. Along with that, this discovery is not only important for T-cells but also for other biological developments.
My hypotheses/project:
Now that you’ve understood T-cells, our immune system, and synthetic T-cells it is important to understand what my idea is when it comes to synthetic T-cells. As I mentioned they can be used for many different purposes but they will be most useful in the body actively helping. As we grow older our telomeres weaken and our cells become weaker. This also includes our T-cells. As you have seen our T-cells play a major role in our body so losing them can and will shorten health and life span.
So giving those with a lower count of T-cells the opportunity to have many more is amazing. Not only do T-cells strengthen your immune system it fights so many deadly things, such as cancer. Other than protecting us T-cells make up our organs. Technically all cells do makeup or organs and since T-cells are such strong cells our organs and body will get weaker as we lose more of them. And when you lose more vital parts of your body your immune system becomes open to opportunistic infections.
So synthetic T-cells as we know have not been yet tested on humans and it is unknown how the human body will react to having a synthetic version of their own cells. When humans receive transplants or body parts that aren’t theirs they have a chance of their body rejecting them. This means that since the cells aren't completely unique to them, your body will negatively react by impulse and reject the transplant.
There is a chance of this occurring with synthetic T-cells not only because they aren’t ours but also because they are synthetic and made in a lab. If the body ends up rejecting the T-cells it would be a waste of synthetic T-cells and the patient will get sicker and lose their T-cells. And since everyone's T-cells are unique and can hold different physical characters, as a treatment it can be possible to change it the slightest to make it become a good treatment to better longevity and healthspan.
The first thing that we could do is isolate a few of the patient's T-cells and study them to see if their any different than the synthetic ones and if so cater the synthetic cells to their uniqueness. For example, if they have drastically different DNA sequences than normal, synthetic T-cells can be gene-edited or molecularly changed to adapt to what the body is used to. The main reason that your body rejects transplants is due to the fact that it doesn't recognize what was just put into it but if the cell is similar enough it will be able to adapt to your body.
Another important part of this treatment would be specifying what type of T-cells would be made. Though all types of T-cells would be made and given I believe that if a patient is more so laking cytotoxic T-cells for example you cater to that and make more synthetic cytotoxic T-cells while also making the other. Because a good balance of all amounts of T-cells is important. And to do so you change certain things in the cell for example cytotoxic T-cells will include CD8’s.
But will this work/how will it work:
When it came to seeing if these synthetic T-cells could actually work in the human body and be used to boost longevity and healthspan I had no idea if this could be done or not. So since there was no exact simulation to run I reached out to the head of research in synthetic T-cells at UCLA. We were able to meet and he said that this could be entirely possible.
Of course not in this day and age but they could be developed or we can adapt synthetic T-cells to be able to go into the body.
In order for this to work the first thing that would have to happen is shrink down the size of the T-cells. When the synthetic T-cell treatment happens it would be injected straight into the bloodstream. When things are injected into the bloodstream they can't be too big. The proportions have to be smaller and the same as the patient's normal cells. Along with that, we need to optimize the amount of T-cells. To do so observe the mass of the body and blood, how many T-cells are currently working and alive, then later how much the patient is in need of T-cells.
If the patient is fighting a certain or specific disease, virus, or tumour then you would have to assure that these T-cells are able to fight it off. Giving T-cells the antibodies is a very important part. Antibodies are link Y-shaped links. They are built to bind links and kill the body's foreign invaders.
As you see synthetic T-cells hold so much potential. And I hope after reading this you are inspired to go and learn more about synthetic T-cells.
To deeply understand it I decided to do an at-home experiment mimicking the form of synthetic T-cells. I used polysaccharides to create a form of alginate biopolymer. And mineral oil. Though this is more of a knock of the form of both substances I was able to see and observe the effects each substance had on one another. As I added the mineral oil the biopolymer began to separate creating many little balls similar to cells.
We’re providing opportunities for the next generation of student thinkers, inventors, and learners, to publish their thoughts, ideas, and innovation through writing.
Our writers span from all areas of topics — from Growth to Tech, all the way to Future and World.
So if you feel like you’re about to jump into a rabbit hole of reading these incredible articles, don’t worry, we feel the same way. ;)
That’s why studentsxstudents is the place for getting your voice heard!
Sounds interesting? Why not join us on this epic journey?
