mTEC damage risks immune recovery.

Whether autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation is free from graft-versus-host disease is controversial. Alawam et al. (2021. J. Exp. Med.https://doi.org/10.1084/jem.20211239) now demonstrate that prolonged damage in thymic medullary epithelial cells causes the failure in self-tolerance in newly generated T cells and provokes post-transplant autoimmunity.