INDIVIDUAL “piggy banks” of immune cells might one day be used to boost our own immune systems or to fight HIV and cancer. The immune cells would be grown in piglets from each patient’s own cells.
Our immune system’s T-cells, which play a key role in fighting off diseases, are “primed” in childhood to fight particular pathogens. This plasticity diminishes after puberty, but at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, has come up with a way to revive it. He reckons that if a human’s immune cells are transferred into a young pig, they could become primed…
