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Immunology

A metabolic switch to memory

Nature volume 460, pages 41–42 (2009)Cite this article

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. In this issue, Pearce et al.2 (page 103) and Araki et al.3 (page 108) report that two drugs, one used to control diabetes and the other to prevent organ-transplant rejection, markedly enhance memory T-cell development. Through their actions on major metabolic pathways in the cell, these drugs seem to promote the switch from growth to quiescent survival.

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Figure 1: The metabolic state of T-cell memory.

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Authors and Affiliations

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

    Martin Prlic & Michael J. Bevan

  2. mbevan@u.washington.edu,

    Martin Prlic & Michael J. Bevan

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  1. Martin Prlic
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  2. Michael J. Bevan
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Prlic, M., Bevan, M. A metabolic switch to memory. Nature 460, 41–42 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/460041a

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