Another Immune System Link Found That Science Said Didn't Exist

Scientists developing such vaccines may need to reconsider their work in light of the new findings or risk unintentionally sabotaging their own efforts. UVA’s Kenneth Tung, MD, said that many vaccines likely are failing simply because researchers are picking the wrong targets – targets that aren’t actually foreign to the immune system and thus won’t provoke the desired immune responses.

Overturning Orthodoxy

Tung, of UVA’s Beirne B. Carter Center for Immunology Research, and a team of collaborators have discovered an unexpected interaction between men’s testes and the immune system. While science textbooks insist the testes are barricaded from the immune system by an impenetrable wall of cells, the researchers have determined there’s actually a very small door in that wall, a door that appears to open in only one direction.

Kenneth Tung, M.D., of the University of Virginia School of Medicine, has discovered an unknown connection between men’s testes and the immune system — a link that could explain infertility and the failure of cancer vaccines.

Credit: Josh Barney | UVA Health System

The team discovered that the testes release some, but not all, of the antigens – substances that can spur an immune response – that are created during the production of sperm. Because the testes release these antigens naturally, the immune system ignores them. That’s a normal, healthy response, but it also may explain why cancer vaccines are failing. Cancer vaccines target antigens, so if vaccine developers rely on antigens that are ignored by the immune system, the vaccine won’t work.