Although people now have a wide selection of approaches to defeat diseases, it would be the best if we could rely on our own immune systems. Probably that’s why growing attention has been attached to immunotherapy in recent days. The mechanism of immunotherapy is rather complicated and lots of factors are involved and inter-related. And in this article, we are going to talk about Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) and its role.

For those unpleasant intruders such as viruses, bacteria or cancer cells, our immune systems have several ways prepared to fight against them. First, our skin, mucus, saliva, tears naturally constitute the first defense line, so as the inflammatory response. Closely following are more specific, complicated defensive mechanism that targets different invading intruder. To put it another way, our body makes adaptive responses according to different invaders. In this process, antibodies and T cells are there to produce humoral response and cell-mediated response, respectively. T cells are famous for their ability to destroy other cells. Major histocompatibility complex (MHC), which is responsible for graft rejection, or tissue compatibility, is a very important regulator during the cell-mediated adaptive immune response.

Simply put, MHC has extensive combinations. And for any two unrelated individuals, there is roughly a 10 percent of chances of difference on average. Provided that two individuals have identical MHC, then the grafts can be exchanged more successfully. In fact, the diversity in MHC proteins could be seen as a positive thing as the difference makes it more difficult for an invading pathogen to elude the host immune system, protecting our body in a way.

Perhaps the biggest role that MHC plays in the immune response is that it can bind small peptides and also to present them to the cell surface where the antigen can be recognised by T cell receptors. Next, we’ll focus on MHC as a means of antigen processing.

Among humans, MHC peptide helps to break down proteins inside the cell and display these short fragments (or called peptide antigens) on the cell surface. Both ‘self’ peptides and foreign peptides derived from invading pathogens are displayed by MHC molecules. Those peptides presented by MHC is of great help for immune cells in order to differentiate normal antigens and abnormal foreign intruders and potentially dangerous ones. You know that the immune system is like a diligent watch that constantly monitors the surfaces of cells, to see if anything strange occurs. The immune system also monitors the amount of MHC-presented antigens, which helps them to target and destroy cancerous cells that often display increased amounts of self-antigens.

About the Author

With years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, Creative Peptides has grown to be a large manufacturer offering one-stop services including MHC-peptide Tetramer, custom synthesis of stable isotope labeled peptides and cell penetrating peptides, etc. Well-equipped with high-caliber academic and research staff, Creative Peptides could be your exclusive choice in solving scientific and clinical challenges.