Giving Compass' Take:

• Susan Keown explains how researchers are coming to better understand how organs heal themselves to shed light on ways to help cancer patients. 

• How can funders help to drive research in this field? What organizations are engaged in this work already? 

• Learn how to find and fund scientific research. 

With advances in cancer immunotherapy splashing across headlines, the immune system’s powerful cancer assassins — T cells — have become dinner-table conversation. But hiding in plain sight behind that “T” is the organ from which they get their name and learn their craft: the thymus.

A new study published recently in Science Immunology identifies a molecule called BMP4 that plays a key role in the thymus’s extraordinary natural ability to recover from damage.

BMP4 is only the second known driver of natural thymic regeneration. (The first one, called IL22, was discovered by the same research team in 2012.) The researchers found that BMP4 is produced by certain cells lining the inside of the organ. That molecule signals other cells of the thymus to turn on genes that promote development and repair.

Now, the team is working to figure out whether there’s a master trigger that activates the whole regeneration process — and then translate that knowledge into new therapies that help patients.

Read the full article about how the immune system's key organ regenerates itself by Susan Keown at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.