Pinned
Small but mighty! This is a video of a killer T cell of the immune system destroying a monstrous ovarian cancer cell. I recently captured this data on a spinning disc confocal microscope.
GIF
Alex Ritter, PhD
282 posts
Alex Ritter, PhD
@AlexRitterPhD
Cell biologist/immunologist/glassblower studying how killer T cells destroy cancer. See linked Instagram for glass art and cell content! 🔬🦠
- Killer T cells are beautiful! This high resolution/rapid acquisition video of a T cell attacking a lymphoma cancer cell was captured on a specialized Lattice Light Sheet microscope with the help of my wonderful collaborators @HHMIJanelia. See more details in the thread below.
GIF - POLL: I'm thinking of creating a short video to explain the beautiful bit of biology we can observe in these images of immune cells killing cancer. Is this something you'd be interested in seeing? If "yes" please like - if "heck yeah!" please share 🙃
GIF - 👾 🦠🚨NEW PAPER ALERT!🚨🦠👾 I am thrilled to announce that our work on cancer cell resistance to killer T cell attack was published as the cover article @ScienceMagazine today. More info in the thread below. 1/
- It's propidium iodide which is in the media. The PI is cell impermeable, and will only fluoresce when it binds to nucleic acids in a cell. When the T cell secretes it's pore forming toxins toward the target, the PI fluxes through those pores to light up the inside of the cell :)
- I'm excited to share that I will be joining the team of @HanaScientist @altos_labs to contribute to the goal of programming cellular rejuvenation to restore cell health and resilience. How can we modulate or engineer the immune system to aid in this effort?
00:00 - Honored and humbled that our article was selected for the cover of @ScienceMagazine. The image of the T cell (red) attacking a cancer cell (white) is a digital reconstruction of 3D electron micrographs collected with collaborators @HHMIJanelia. Segmentation/rendering @ariadne_aiA whole-genome analysis of more than 12,000 cancers, investigating the impacts of traffic safety messages, and revealing new insights into how tumor cells escape death. Check out what's new this week in Science. ➡ fcld.ly/q21xtsn
- 🦠🦠🦠 T-cell Team work! Often, we observe that one T cell alone cannot kill a cancer cell. In vivo, many T cells “work together” to destroy these threats. This post from @genentech highlights an example of this observation. Check out the link in the last post on the thread! 🔬🔬This video by @Ritterlab shows an immune cell called a T cell (purple) approaching and attaching to a cancer cell (teal). The T cell tries to kill the cancer cell by secreting a toxin (red wave), but the cancer cell survives. Follow this thread to see how this battle ends. ⬇️
00:00 - Hello everyone! Thank you so much for your interest in learning more about how T cells kill their targets. I have more microscopy videos to share that will reveal finer details. I'll be sharing these (and also responding to DMs and comments) in the coming days. Much love, Alex ❤️
- Replying to @AlexRitterPhDThe fiery protrusions you see in the T cell are formed by the actin cytoskeleton, which I've labeled with a fluorescent protein. Killer T cells strongly adhere and display dynamic cytoskeletal activity when they recognize a cancer cell they will target for destruction.
- Super happy we got the chance to collaborate with scientists @HHMIJanelia to capture ultra-high resolution 3D electron microscopy data of a T cell killing a cancer cell. Here's a peak at the data. Our recent Science cover image is a reconstruction of this real imaging data.
00:00 - Thanks for all the positive responses on this poll! I am working on a video (or a short series of videos) which will go into more depth describing how T cells kill cancer and what is being shown in these videos.POLL: I'm thinking of creating a short video to explain the beautiful bit of biology we can observe in these images of immune cells killing cancer. Is this something you'd be interested in seeing? If "yes" please like - if "heck yeah!" please share 🙃GIF
- Replying to @mjinko_ieYep! This took about an hour in real time. :)
- Replying to @Lile_sosannaThanks for sharing, @Lile_sosanna. I hope my small contributions help us along toward better cancer treatments!
