Research Highlights in 2020

A systematic analysis of the ageing immune system of the mouse revealed the emergence of a novel T cell subset that displays markers of exhaustion. A similar T cell subset was also identified in ageing humans.

A new subset of neutrophils is identified in mice that promotes protection and regeneration of neurons following neuronal damage.

A recent study in Science describes that maternal allergen-specific IgE can cross the placenta to sensitize fetal mast cells in mice and predispose to neonatal allergy.

This report shows that trained immunity, a form of innate immune memory, can be induced through nanobiologics and that these have anticancer properties and can sensitize to checkpoint therapy.

Upregulation of the protease ADAMTS4 by activated fibroblasts drives immunopathology in the lungs and respiratory failure during severe viral infections.

The tetracycline antibiotic doxycycline is shown to not only have direct antimicrobial effects but also promote disease tolerance mechanisms, including tissue repair and metabolic reprogramming.

Microbial metabolite inosine improves antitumour responses to immune checkpoint blockade therapy.

Cardiac macrophages clear up faulty mitochondria from muscle cells in order to maintain heart health.

This Web Watch introduces the VaC tracker, a web resource that features an overview of the COVID-19 ‘vaccine landscape’, a clinical trials database and a ‘living review’ that distils the results of vaccine trials as they become available.

A population of meningeal γδ T cells regulates anxiety-like behaviour and threat avoidance in mice through IL-17a production, which signals to neurons in the medial prefrontal cortex.

Two papers report the development of novel systemic agonists of stimulator of interferon genes (STING) and show that these boost antitumour immunity in mouse models of cancer

To protect from infection and preserve maternal–fetal tolerance, decidual natural killer cells deliver cytotoxic effectors through nanotubes to selectively kill intracellular bacteria and not the host cell.

Deep-sea anglerfish that mate via sexual parasitism have lost key components of adaptive immunity.

To keep tissue pathology at bay following nematode infection, basophils ensure that group 2 innate lymphoid cells can respond to neuron-derived signals to temper their activity.

Histone deacetylases are typically involved in transcriptional repression, but a report in Nature describes a mechanism by which HDAC3 can also activate macrophage transcription in response to lipopolysaccharide in a deacetylase-independent manner.

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapies for cancer immunotherapy can lead to excessive cytokine release. Now, a report in Cell shows that inclusion of the CD3ε signalling domain in CAR constructs may restrain cytokine release and improve anti-tumour function.

An RNA vaccine targeting tumour-associated antigens promotes T cell immunity in patients with advanced melanoma.

Resident CD4⁺ T cells support microglial cell maturation in the healthy brain and in their absence mice develop a range of behavioural abnormalities.

Bile acid from intestinal symbiotic bacteria helps to resist alphavirus infection by supporting type I interferon responses by plasmacytoid dendritic cells, which in turn limit the permissiveness of circulating monocytes to viral infection.

Multi-omics profiling of endothelial cells, epithelial cells and fibroblasts from 12 mouse organs was used to create an atlas of immune gene activity in structural cells.