In early 2022, staff from the NIAID at the NIH organized a workshop focusing on the innate immune response to SARS-CoV-2. In this Viewpoint article, some of the organizers and invited speakers share their thoughts on key outcomes of this meeting.

Myeloid cells contribute to the immunosuppressive tumour microenvironment and can be responsible for resistance to cancer immunotherapy. Here, the authors describe the current therapies that aim to modulate the functional activities of myeloid cell populations, impacting their recruitment, survival and activity in the tumour microenvironment, acting at the level of cell surface receptors, signalling pathways, epigenetic machinery and metabolic regulators.

In this Perspective, the authors reflect on the historical development of host-directed immunotherapeutic interventions for viral and bacterial infections, and then focus on how historical insights can be applied to current approaches to therapy of SARS-CoV-2 and Mycobacterium tuberculosis infections.

The cytokine thymic stromal lymphopoietin (TSLP) has pleiotropic functions beyond allergic diseases and T helper 2-type immune responses. Here, the authors highlight the roles of TSLP — beneficial or deleterious — in infectious disease, chronic inflammatory disease and cancer by acting on many different cell types.