Scientists at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center are reporting today how B cells, a type of blood cell critical to the immune system, can be efficiently engineered to make antibodies against specific diseases, working much like a vaccine.
Antibodies are tiny, Y-shaped proteins that lock onto bacteria, viruses and fungi encountered in the body. B cells are the natural factories that churn out these protective proteins by the billions.
The goal of nearly every successful vaccine — for diseases ranging from tetanus to hepatitis — is to coax B cells into making swarms of antibodies to block a specific microbial threat. Yet the process, which harkens back to the first smallpox vaccination in 1796, does not always work as well as doctors would like. Sometimes protection is partial; sometimes vaccines don’t work at all.
In research published online today in Science Immunology, a Hutch team led by Dr. Justin Taylor shows that B cells can be genetically engineered to make exactly the antibodies we want — demonstrating a potentially more precise and dependable way to generate protection without vaccines.
