Dendritic cells: immunological features and utilisation for tumour immunotherapy.

The prospect of developing 'magic bullets' to attack tumour cells has been a goal of biologists for decades. Abundant experimental and clinical observations demonstrating that an effective specific immune response may engender tumour regression has prompted efforts to find an immunotherapeutic approach to this problem. The most important arm of cellular immunity for such responses appears to be cytotoxic T-lymphocytes (CTL) which can recognise antigen on virtually all cell types and which are key to the elimination of virally-infected cells.

Monocyte-mediated entry of pathogens into the central nervous system.

The origin of the microglia has long been a subject of debate. However it is now clear that monocytes enter the normal central nervous system and follow a series of morphological transformations as they differentiate into microglia. Thus, microglia are of monocytic origin.