Browse Articles

Pulendran and colleagues delineated the mechanisms underlying the nonspecific antiviral effects exerted by the BCG vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 and reveal a pivotal role for BCG-specific CD4⁺ T cells that produce interferon-γ in imprinting a persistent antiviral innate program in the lung, mediating heterologous viral protection.

The immune response to dengue virus infection is a well-coordinated balancing act. New research shows that an imbalanced response — driven partially by the productive infection of antigen-presenting cells — is associated with progression to severe disease.

Cancer immunology research is diverse, uses cutting-edge technologies and continues to excite with its constantly evolving contribution to new therapeutic options, and not just for patients with cancer.

Here, the authors show that combining γ9δ2 TCR-mediated metabolic and co-stimulatory stress targeting by chimeric NKG2D or anti-CD277 co-receptors shapes transcriptomic heterogeneity of engineered T cells and is associated with improved control of solid tumors.

Sharpe and colleagues devise a conditional gene deletion model in mice for rapid sequential, combinatorial and lineage-specific interrogation of gene function in hematopoietic cells.

Bantug and Hess discuss the metabolic interplay between tumor-resident cells and how the effect of metabolism-targeted anticancer strategies on non-transformed or immune cells in the tumor needs to be considered.

Induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived macrophages (iMACs) are being used to make chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) macrophages for immunotherapy. Here the authors design a second-generation macrophage-specific CAR by integrating CD3ζ and toll/IL-1R (TIR) domains resulting in an M1-polarized CAR-iMAC with increased antitumor functions.

Here the authors review CAR T cell engineering and immunotherapy for cancer and juxtapose state-of-the-art developments with CAR NK cells as part of our Cancer Immunology series of Reviews.

Wu and colleagues identify gene networks and transcription factors that control the differentiation of stem-like CD8+ CAR T cells into effector or exhausted CD8⁺ CAR T cells.

We are in the midst of an explosion of multiomics and spatial data along with constant innovation of the tools used to study these data. In this Review article, as part of our Cancer Immunology and Immunotherapy series, the authors discuss these innovations and their application to study the tumor microenvironment.

Mandal and colleagues report how the chromatin modulator BRWD1 mediates extensive changes in 3D chromatin topology during B cell development by converting static to dynamic cohesin.

Interleukin-27 (IL-27) is a pleiotropic cytokine known for its diverse immune regulatory properties. Although innate immune cells are considered the major cellular sources of IL-27, we found that gut regulatory T cells (T_reg cells) secrete IL-27 under inflammatory conditions, allowing them to selectively limit intestinal helper T17 cell (T_H17 cell) responses in various disease settings.

Cancer cells often overexpress CD47, which triggers the macrophage receptor SIRPα to elude anti-tumor immunity. We found that CD47 also suppresses phagocytosis by masking a pro-phagocytic ligand, SLAMF7, on tumor cells. We generated a first-in-class SLAMF7 antibody, which dissociated the CD47–SLAMF7 cis interaction, enabling anti-tumor immunity during SIRPα blockade.

Iwawura et al. identify a noncanonical role for NOD1, independent from its CARD-mediated proteoglycan sensing. Interactions between NOD1 and STAT5 are required for optimal lymphopoiesis in response to homeostatic cytokines.

Love and colleagues find an inhibitory function for CD3ζ ITAMs in response to low-affinity ligands, meaning that CD3ζ can perform a dual function in TCR signaling by playing a positive or negative role depending on the affinity of the TCR for its peptide ligand.