Unlocking the drains

摘要

Sometimes it's hard to be a scientist. Just five years ago, Mihaela Skobe, a molecular biologist now at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, and her team were struggling to publish their work on the lymphatic system. Editors and reviewers thought it boring. The polite but yawning rejection letters came. "They would say that everything in the paper was fine but that lymphatics were unimportant," says Skobe. "There was a complete lack of interest." Not any more. Once dismissed as a mere drainage network, the body's 'second circulation system (see Graphic, right) is emerging as a crucial player in numerous diseases from cancer to asthma, and as a vital part of the normal immune system. As a result of these discoveries, researchers are trying to intervene in its activities, for example to reduce the spread of tumours, to boost the efficiency of vaccines, or to treat the painful and disfiguring swelling known as lymph- oedema.