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The role of recruitment versus training in influenza-induced lasting changes to alveolar macrophage function

Nature Immunology volume 24, pages 1639–1641 (2023)Cite this article

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Matters Arising to this article was published on 28 August 2023

The Original Article was published on 20 February 2023

arising from T. Wang et al. Nature Immunology https://doi.org/10.1038/s41590-023-01428-x (2023)

In their recent publication, Wang et al. propose that influenza infection in the lungs confers resistance to metastatic tumor growth due to trained immunity in the alveolar macrophage (AM) compartment, underpinned by enhanced pro-inflammatory cytokine production, augmented phagocytosis and metabolic rewiring1. Although these findings are broadly in line with prior work demonstrating that viral infections can cause long-lasting changes in the AM compartment, affecting subsequent challenges2,3,4,5, many of these earlier studies attributed functional changes to monocyte-derived AMs emerging during infection2,3,4 rather than training of pre-existing AMs. In light of this discrepancy, we believe that there is insufficient consideration of AM origin in the study by Wang et al. to formally claim that the mechanism of tumor protection is trained immunity. We believe that strategies chosen for cellular identification and purification as well as data interpretation do not fully take into account the importance of recruited monocyte-derived AMs, which share functions with trained AMs, and may therefore be mistaken as such.

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Fig. 1: Recruitment versus training of the alveolar macrophage compartment.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Immunoregulation Laboratory, Francis Crick Institute, London, UK

    Chrysante S. Iliakis, Justina Kulikauskaite & Andreas Wack

  2. Laboratory of Immunoregulation and Mucosal Immunology, VIB–UGent Center for Inflammation Research, Ghent, Belgium

    Helena Aegerter

  3. Department of Internal Medicine and Pediatrics, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Helena Aegerter

  4. Institute of Molecular Health Sciences, Department of Biology, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

    Fengqi Li, Federica Piattini & Manfred Kopf

  5. Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine, Hanover, NH, USA

    Claudia V. Jakubzick

  6. Laboratory of Myeloid Cell Biology in Tissue Homeostasis and Regeneration, VIB–UGent Center for Inflammation Research, Ghent, Belgium

    Martin Guilliams

  7. Department of Biomedical Molecular Biology, Faculty of Sciences, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Martin Guilliams

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  1. Chrysante S. Iliakis
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  4. Fengqi Li
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  7. Martin Guilliams
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  8. Manfred Kopf
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  9. Andreas Wack
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Contributions

C.S.I. and A.W. wrote the manuscript. J.K., H.A., F.L., F.P., C.V.J., M.G. and M.K. contributed conceptionally and helped to edit the text.

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Correspondence to Andreas Wack.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Immunology thanks Maziar Divangahi and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editor: N. Bernard, in collaboration with the Nature Immunology team.

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Iliakis, C.S., Kulikauskaite, J., Aegerter, H. et al. The role of recruitment versus training in influenza-induced lasting changes to alveolar macrophage function. Nat Immunol 24, 1639–1641 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41590-023-01602-1

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