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Innate immune memory, trained immunity and nomenclature clarification

Nature Immunology volume 24, pages 1393–1394 (2023)Cite this article

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Trained innate immunity (TRIM) is a newly emerging field of study that is of focal importance in immunology. Defined as an enhanced immune responsiveness of innate immune cells to a future challenge owing to memory of a prior encounter, TRIM existed as a latent, yet ignored, concept even before it was coined as such and systematized as a new field1,2. Epidemiological studies indicating antigen-agnostic protective effects of certain vaccines unrelated to their target disease, experimental animal studies showing lymphocyte-independent enhanced resistance to secondary infection, and evidence of memory-based broad protection against reinfection in invertebrates and plants (reviewed in refs. 1,3) were largely overlooked in the face of the concept that immunological memory was the exclusive prerogative of adaptive immunity. Given the importance of immune memory for host defense and survival, it is now thought that trained innate immunity evolved first, as an epigenetically based memory devoid of specificity, before antigen-specific immunological memory developed in jawed vertebrates, leading later to the acquisition of recombination-activating genes and hence the ability to generate a diverse repertoire of antigen-specific receptors4.

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Fig. 1: Induction of innate immune memory that leads to trained immune response after restimulation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Basic and Translational Sciences, Laboratory of Innate Immunity and Inflammation, Penn Dental Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    George Hajishengallis

  2. Department of Internal Medicine and Radboud Center for Infectious Diseases, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands

    Mihai G. Netea

  3. Department of Immunology and Metabolism, Life and Medical Science Institute, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

    Mihai G. Netea

  4. Institute for Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany

    Triantafyllos Chavakis

Authors
  1. George Hajishengallis
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  2. Mihai G. Netea
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  3. Triantafyllos Chavakis
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to George Hajishengallis.

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Competing interests

M.G.N. is a scientific founder of Lemba, TTxD and Biotrip. The other authors declare no competing interests.

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Hajishengallis, G., Netea, M.G. & Chavakis, T. Innate immune memory, trained immunity and nomenclature clarification. Nat Immunol 24, 1393–1394 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41590-023-01595-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41590-023-01595-x

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