A research group of Australian scientists have managed to observe T-cells which could lead to major breakthroughs in cancer research.

The team based at the University of New South Wales and led by Associate Professor Katharina Gauss and PhD candidate David Williamson has discovered what the "switch" that enables T-cells to function. The team discovered this using the only super resolution fluorescence microscope of its kind in Australia.

Associate Professor Katharina Gauss, who led the research, said in a report by the Life Scientist said that this was the first time individual T-cells were observed. The team's discovery has added new knowledge to T-cell research. ''Previously it was thought that T-cell signaling was initiated at the cell surface in molecular clusters that formed around the activated receptor,'' she said.

T-cells needed to be switched on to perform their roles as the soldiers of the immune system. Scientists have never been able to answer how until now. The team discovered that T-cell's antigen receptors were not initiated at the cell surface as what was previously thought but in small membrane enclosed sacks called vesicles inside the cell.

Dr. Gauss said that this discovery explained how fast the immune response is in the body. "There is this rolling amplification. The signaling station is like a docking port or an airport with vesicles like planes landing and taking off. The process allows a few receptors to activate a cell and then trigger the entire immune response," she said.

Other members of the research team were cell biologists Dr. Jeremie Rossy and Dr. Astrid Magenau from the and Dr Astrid Magenau, from the Centre for Vascular Research, and Professor Justin Gooding and Matthias Wehrmann, from UNSW's School of Chemistry and the Australian Centre for Nanomedicine and physicist Dr. Dylan Owen.