Strengthening the immune system for cancer prevention

Schooling and Zhao comment on Palmer et al's study showing that a model based on immune senescence provides a better fit to age-specific cancer incidence than a model based on random mutations. Palmer et al could more explicitly identify how their model explains another key feature of cancer and infectious disease incidence, which would strengthen their argument: that is, the substantially higher rates of cancer in men than in women. In their report, they focus on the role of the thymus in immune senescence and, specifically, naïve T cell production proxied by T cell receptor excision circle DNA, which is higher in women than men. Specifically, identifying and explaining what drives this key difference would provide more insight for translation of the findings to primary care and health policy.