Trained immunity: a program of innate immune memory in health and disease
Abstract
Training immune cells to remember Classical immunological memory, carried out by T and B lymphocytes, ensures that we feel the ill effects of many pathogens only once. Netea et al.review how cells of the innate immune system, which lack the antigen specificity, clonality, and longevity of T cell and B cells, have some capacity to remember, too. Termed “trained immunity,” the property allows macrophages, monocytes, and natural killer cells to show enhanced responsiveness when they reencounter pathogens. Epigenetic changes largely drive trained immunity, which is shorter lived and less specific than classical memory but probably still gives us a leg up during many infections. Science, this issue p. 10.1126/science.aaf1098 BACKGROUND Host immune responses are classically divided into innate immune responses, which react rapidly and nonspecifically upon encountering a pathogen, and adaptive immune responses, which are slower to develop but are specific and build up immunological memory. The dogma that only adaptive immunity can build immunological memory has recently been challenged by studies showing that innate immune responses in plants and invertebrates (organisms lacking adaptive immune responses) can mount resistance to reinfection. Furthermore, in certain mammalian models of vaccination, protection from reinfection has been shown to occur independently of T and B lymphocytes. These observations led to the hypothesis that innate immunity can display adaptive…
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