Oncology & Cancer

Researchers develop dual anti-tumor vaccine

A research team at the LKS Faculty of Medicine, the University of Hong Kong (HKUMed), has discovered that exosomes derived from γδ-T cells not only have direct anti-tumor effects but also, when developed into a tumor vaccine, ...

Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes

How human cytomegalovirus hijacks the immune system

The human cytomegalovirus, HCMV for short, lies dormant unnoticed in the body of most people for their entire lives. In immunocompromised individuals, however, the virus can cause life-threatening infections. It infects dendritic ...

Oncology & Cancer

Re-exposing a cancer protein to enhance immunotherapy

Successful immunotherapy for cancer involves activating a person's own T cells to identify telltale proteins called antigens on the surface of a tumor and attack it. But some tumors have a trick: They hide themselves from ...

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Dendrite

Dendrites (from Greek δένδρον déndron, “tree”) are the branched projections of a neuron that act to conduct the electrochemical stimulation received from other neural cells to the cell body, or soma, of the neuron from which the dendrites project. Electrical stimulation is transmitted onto dendrites by upstream neurons via synapses which are located at various points throughout the dendritic arbor. Dendrites play a critical role in integrating these synaptic inputs and in determining the extent to which action potentials are produced by the neuron. Recent research has also found that dendrites can support action potentials and release neurotransmitters, a property that was originally believed to be specific to axons.

The long outgrowths on immune system dendritic cells are also called dendrites. These dendrites do not process electrical signals.

Certain classes of dendrites (i.e. Purkinje cells of cerebellum, cerebral cortex) contain small projections referred to as "appendages" or "spines". Appendages increase receptive properties of dendrites to isolate signal specificity. Increased neural activity at spines increases their size and conduction which is thought to play a role in learning and memory formation. There are approximately 200,000 spines per cell, each of which serve as a postsynaptic process for individual presynaptic axons.

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