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This Collection from Nature Reviews Immunology presents a series of specially commissioned ‘Year in Review’ articles that highlight the key advances in hot topics in immunology in 2019. Leading experts in the fields of immunometabolism, neuroimmunology, mucosal immunology, Inflammation, vaccines, single-cell biology, macrophages and tissue-specific immunity describe their pick of top papers published in 2019, outlining the impact and implications of the research.
Recent research in mucosal immunology has uncovered novel lines of communication between the mucosal immune system and other cellular and metabolic pathways. Given the complexity of these networks, new precision approaches are being developed to dissect the contribution of specific pathways or selected microorganisms.
Our knowledge of how the immune system changes with age has benefitted from a growing appreciation of the importance of systems-level analyses in humans. We are now beginning to uncover the global patterns of immune system development and decline in the young and the elderly.
The field of innate immunity has been rapidly evolving and expanding its horizons during the past few years. 2018 was no exception, with the publication of several ground-breaking studies that bring into light new activators, regulators and signalling networks that drive innate immune responses and inflammation.
The field of immunometabolism (both on the cellular as well as on the organismal level) is advancing rapidly. This article highlights several studies from 2018 that examine how immune cells can regulate systemic metabolism, as well as studies of the impact of organismal metabolism on the immune system in conditions such as obesity and cancer.
After many years of being largely neglected in neurodegenerative disease, the past few years have seen a turning point in the field’s view on the impact of microglia in neurological disorders.
The study of B cell biology is a mature field, but highlights from the past year remind us that there are still many exciting and unexpected things to be discovered in terms of B cell responses to antigen, germinal centres and plasma cells.
Several clinical studies in 2018 documented the potency of therapies based on T cells with chimeric antigen receptors (CAR T cells), but also revealed mechanisms of resistance. These insights may facilitate the design of improved CAR T cell therapies for B cell malignancies and beyond.
The generation of an HIV vaccine remains the holy grail for eliminating HIV infection worldwide. Major advances in 2018 centred on sequential multi-immunogen strategies that are designed to induce broadly neutralizing antibodies, identifying new targets and defining new approaches to immunogen evaluation.