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Nature 460, 41-42 (2 July 2009) | doi:10.1038/460041a; Published online 1 July 2009

Immunology: A metabolic switch to memory

Martin Prlic1 & Michael J. Bevan1

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Two therapeutic drugs have been found to enhance memory in immune cells called T cells, apparently by altering cellular metabolism. Are changes in T-cell metabolism the key to generating long-lived immune memory?

T lymphocytes respond to an acute infection with a massive burst of proliferation, generating effector T cells that counteract the pathogen. When the infection is cleared, most of these effector T cells die (the contraction phase of the immune response), but a minority lives on and changes into resting memory T cells that rapidly respond to future encounters with the same pathogen1.

  1. Martin Prlic and Michael J. Bevan are in the Department of Immunology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195-7370, USA.
    Email: mprlic@u.washington.edu; Email: mbevan@u.washington.edu

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