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Discarded Thymus glands offer new hope for people with autoimmune disease

The thymus is one of those under appreciated organs you just don’t hear much about. Sitting in your chest, just in front of your heart, the thymus is at its largest and most active during infancy and childhood. By adulthood, the thymus has shrunk to practically nothing, being mostly replaced by fat. It plays an […]

Whole organ 'grown' in animals for the first time

A whole functional organ has been successfully grown in animals for the first time; a group of Scottish researchers created a group of cells which, when transplanted into a mouse, developed into a fully functional thymus – a critical part of the immune system. The findings could lead to a revolution in organ transplant. The […]

Resetting the immune system back 500 million years

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics (MPI-IE)  re-activated the expression of an ancient gene in mice. To their surprise, the gene in question which is dormant in all mammalian species caused the mice to develop  fish-like thymus. The thymus is an organ of paramount importance to the adaptive immune system, but in […]