- 🤧🦠 Did you know that the bugs that cause diseases and cancer cells can fake their "car's license plate" to move illegally through your body without being detected? -
🏙 Imagine your body as a vast and sprawling metropolis, with all the cells of your tissues represented by different types of vehicles. 🚚 Now, each vehicle (cell) has its own unique license plate, the sugars, visible to everyone, giving it its identity. Just as with cars, the license plate provides details about the vehicle's owner, its status, and its function. This way, if a car is functioning properly and following traffic rules, it can continue its journey without issues. But if a car shows signs of malfunction or acts suspiciously, the police can intervene.
👮♂️ The traffic police (cells of your immune system) patrol every street and every corner of the city, closely watching each passing vehicle.
🚨 How do they do it? Well, they have special scanners that allow them to quickly read and decode the license plates. These scanners are known as Lectins, a type of protein that specializes in recognizing sugars.
🦠🤫 However, there are illegal cars (microorganisms and cancer cells) that try to move around the city by faking their license plate to look like those of local cars, a trick to deceive the police. This is called "license plate mimicry" (glycan mimicry). These cars can cause traffic jams, accidents, or even damage the city's infrastructure.
🚓 That's why it's important for the police to be extremely precise in their work, because if they stop and fine a local car by mistake, it can cause unnecessary problems (like autoimmune diseases). On the other hand, if they don't correctly identify illegal vehicles, the city can succumb to disease.
🍰 The study of car license plates, that is, the sugars (glycans) that adorn all the cells in your body and their role in the immune response is known as glyco-biology.
🇦🇷 This is precisely what Dr. Gabriel Rabinovich, an Argentine researcher from CONICET (GalTec), studies, and he has significantly contributed not only to the understanding of all these mechanisms, but also, to the development of new therapies against cancer and autoimmune diseases.
🙆🏻♂️ Thanks to Dr. Gabriel Rabinovich and Dr. Salomé Pinho for inviting me to collaborate with my scientific illustrations, in this fascinating review about immune-regulatory networks coordinated by glycans and lectins in autoimmunity and infection.
👮♂️ The traffic police (cells of your immune system) patrol every street and every corner of the city, closely watching each passing vehicle.
🚨 How do they do it? Well, they have special scanners that allow them to quickly read and decode the license plates. These scanners are known as Lectins, a type of protein that specializes in recognizing sugars.
🦠🤫 However, there are illegal cars (microorganisms and cancer cells) that try to move around the city by faking their license plate to look like those of local cars, a trick to deceive the police. This is called "license plate mimicry" (glycan mimicry). These cars can cause traffic jams, accidents, or even damage the city's infrastructure.
🚓 That's why it's important for the police to be extremely precise in their work, because if they stop and fine a local car by mistake, it can cause unnecessary problems (like autoimmune diseases). On the other hand, if they don't correctly identify illegal vehicles, the city can succumb to disease.
🍰 The study of car license plates, that is, the sugars (glycans) that adorn all the cells in your body and their role in the immune response is known as glyco-biology.
🇦🇷 This is precisely what Dr. Gabriel Rabinovich, an Argentine researcher from CONICET (GalTec), studies, and he has significantly contributed not only to the understanding of all these mechanisms, but also, to the development of new therapies against cancer and autoimmune diseases.
🙆🏻♂️ Thanks to Dr. Gabriel Rabinovich and Dr. Salomé Pinho for inviting me to collaborate with my scientific illustrations, in this fascinating review about immune-regulatory networks coordinated by glycans and lectins in autoimmunity and infection.
Illustration requested by Dr. Gabriel Rabinovich (IBYME-CONICET) and Dr. Salomé Pinho (IRIH, UoO). Published in Cellular & molecular immunology, Aug 2023
