In a year when venting spleen dominated much of public discourse, we consider the humble organ of that name. You can live without your spleen, but your immune system will be happier with it.

The spleen's normal job is to filter the blood and to destroy and break down worn out red blood cells. When you have CLL your spleen can become so clogged up with abnormal cells that it doesn't work ...

The spleen is a key component of the immune system. It filters old blood cells, bacteria, tumor cells out of the blood and breaks them down. The macrophages then get rid of them.

Once deemed "non-essential," the spleen now emerges as nature’s ultimate toolkit for regenerative medicine—proving that life’s most powerful solutions may have been inside us all along ...