Published in Nature Immunology
Plasma cells are cellular factories devoted entirely to the manufacture and export of a single product: soluble immunoglobulin (Ig). As the final mediators of a humoral response, plasma cells play a critical role in adaptive immunity. Although intense effort has been devoted to studying the regulation and requirements for early B cell development, ...
Published in Nature Immunology
Gonococci that bind the coinhibitory receptor CEACAM1 appear to down-regulate the activation and proliferation of CD4+ T cells. Such infection-induced immunosuppression helps explain why there is little specific immune response associated with gonococcal disease.
Published in Nature Immunology
Given the key role CD8+ T cells play in controlling viral infection, strategies to enhance these responses may have important clinical applications. We found that in vivo CD137 stimulation with an agonistic monoclonal antibody enhanced the primary CD8+ T cell response to influenza type A viral infection in mice. Stimulation of CD137 increased the a...
Published in Nature Immunology
This Focus issue brings together the cornucopia of strategies that pathogens and tumors utilize to avoid immune recognition. Here Rodney Phillips discusses some general principles that emerge from this analysis.
Published in Nature Immunology
South Africa is in the throes of an AIDS epidemic compounded by tuberculosis. Nevertheless, responses to the recent launch of a colorful book promoting adolescent knowledge of HIV immunopathogenesis provide grounds for cautious optimism that education can induce a form of “social vaccination” in South Africa and elsewhere.
Published in Nature Immunology
It has been proposed that HIV-1, in addition to directly infecting and killing CD4+ T cells, causes T cell dysfunction and T cell loss by chronic immune activation. We analyzed the effects of chronic immune activation in mice that constitutively expressed CD70, the ligand for the tumor necrosis factor receptor family member CD27, on B cells. CD70 t...
Published in Nature Immunology
The CD150 subfamily within the CD2 family is a growing group of dual-function receptors that have within their cytoplasmic tails a characteristic signaling motif. The ITSM (immunoreceptor tyrosine-based switch motif) enables these receptors to bind to and be regulated by small SH2 domain adaptor proteins, including SH2D1A (SH2-containing adaptor pr...
Published in Nature Immunology
Naive CD4+ and CD8+ T cells undergo unique developmental programs after activation, resulting in the generation of effector and long-lived memory T cells. Recent evidence indicates that both cell-intrinsic and cell-extrinsic factors regulate memory T cell differentiation. This review compares and contrasts how naive CD4+ and CD8+ T cells make the t...
Published in Nature Immunology
Studying defined mutants of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in the mouse model of infection has led to the discovery of attenuated mutants that fall into several phenotypic classes. These mutants are categorized by their growth characteristics compared with those of wild-type M. tuberculosis, and include severe growth in vivo mutants, growth in vivo mut...
Published in Nature Immunology
TLR ligands mediate adjuvant effects. Unlike lipopolysaccharide, poly(I:C) is capable of using a TLR-Trif–independent pathway to induce costimulatory molecule upregulation on antigen-presenting cells.
