How lymph nodes expand during disease
The immune system defends the body from infections and can also spot and destroy cancer cells. Lymph nodes are at the heart of this response, but until now it has never been explained how they expand during disease. The researchers — at Cancer Research UK’s London Research Institute — found that when a type of immune cell, called dendritic cells, recognises a threat they make a molecule called CLEC-2 that tells the cells lining the lymph nodes to stretch out and expand to allow for an influx of disease fighting cells. It’s long been known that these same dendritic cells patrol the body searching for threats and call for reinforcements to tackle them…