Skin immune cells that present fragments of invaders to the immune system also promote skin cancer in response to a powerful carcinogen.
Michael Girardi at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and his colleagues exposed the skin of mice to DMBA, a laboratory chemical representative of common carcinogens in industrial pollution. Mice engineered to be deficient in Langerhans cells, the immune cells in question, were almost completely resistant to developing skin cancer. By contrast, the Langerhans cells of normal mice metabolized DMBA to an intermediate that induced a cancer-causing mutation in the DNA of adjacent skin cells.
When the intermediate was applied directly to the skin of the mice, both types developed skin cancer.
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Immune cell boosts cancer. Nature 481, 117 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/481117b
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/481117b
