E-Mail When it comes to distinguishing a healthy cell from an infected one that needs to be destroyed, the immune system's killer T cells sometimes make mistakes. This discovery, described today in eLife, upends a long-held belief among scientists that T cells were nearly perfect at discriminating friend from foe. The results may point to new ways to treat autoimmune diseases that cause the immune system to attack the body, or lead to improvements in cutting-edge cancer treatments. It is widely believed that T cells can discriminate perfectly between infected cells and healthy ones based on how tightly they are able to bind to molecules called antigens on the surface of each. They bind tightly to antigens derived from viruses or bacteria, but less tightly to our own antigens on normal cells. But recent studies by scientists looking at autoimmune diseases suggest that T cells can attack otherwise normal cells if they express unusually large numbers of our own antigens, even though these bind only weakly.