Medullary thymic epithelial cells (mTECs) allow the thymus
to ensure that the body’s T cells are able to distinguish between potentially
harmful foreign antigens and those that are produced by the body itself. A
Swiss-Japanese research team suggests that mTECs do not share a common
progenitor with cortical-thymic TECs (cTECs) that produce T cells, but may
actually evolve from them.
T-lymphocytes, or T cells, are a principal component of the
body’s adaptive immune system. Together, these cells express a large repertoire
of antigen specific receptors that recognise foreign material derived, for
example, from pathogens and tumour cells. The generation of these antigen
receptors occurs during T cell development in the thymus.