He pictures a T cell, roaming the body, and it has powerful cannons on its surface. The job of this artillery is to take out dangerous organisms. But the surface of the T cell also has many antennae. The antennae receive signals from other parts of the immune system authorizing the T cell to fire or, as often as not, telling it not to fire. The cancer had succeeded in connecting to an important antenna, or maybe several, that had hit pause on the cannon. So Lonberg and his cohorts wondered if they could use an antibody to block that antenna from getting a signal.
