Going live – immune cell activation in multiple sclerosis

Biological processes are generally based on events at the molecular and cellular level. To understand what happens in the course of infections, diseases or normal bodily functions, scientists would need to examine individual cells and their activity directly in the tissue. The development of new microscopes and fluorescent dyes in recent years has brought this scientific dream tantalisingly close. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried have now presented not one, but two studies introducing new indicator molecules which can visualise the activation of T cells. Their findings provide new insight into the role of these cells in the autoimmune disease multiple sclerosis (MS). The new indicators are set to be an important tool in the study of other immune reactions as well.

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Inflammation is the body’s defence response to a potentially harmful stimulus. The purpose of an inflammation is to fight and remove the stimulus – whether it be disease-causing pathogens or tissue. As an inflammation progresses, significant steps that occur thus include the recruitment of immune cells, the interactions of these cells in the affected tissue and the resulting activation pattern of the immune cells. The more scientists understand about these steps, the better they can develop more effective drugs and treatments to support them. This is particularly true for diseases like multiple sclerosis. In this autoimmune disorder cells from the body’s immune system penetrate into the central nervous system where they cause massive damage in the course of an inflammation.

In order to truly understand the cellular processes involved in MS, scientists ideally need to study them in real time at the exact location where they take place – directly in the affected tissue. In recent years, new microscopic techniques and fluorescent dyes have been developed to make this possible for the first time. These coloured indicators make individual cells, their components or certain cell processes visible under the microscope. For example, scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology have developed a genetic calcium indicator, TN-XXL, which the cells themselves form, and which highlights the activity of individual nerve cells reliably and for an unlimited time. However, the gene for the indicator was not expressed by immune cells. That is why it was previously impossible to track where in the body and when a contact between immune cells and other cells led to the immune cell’s activation.

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