Lymphatic vessels articles from across Nature Portfolio

The eye and the brain are both recognized as immune-privileged sites. Research now indicates that responses in the eye mirror those in the central nervous system (CNS), offering major implications for the treatment of CNS cancers and infections.

A study provides evidence for a shared lymphatic circuit that connects the posterior eye and the brain, allowing the generation of immune responses to protect the CNS against pathogens and tumours following intravitreal immunization.

Perivascular macrophages (pvMs) are important for brain drainage and immune regulation. Here the authors analyse various reporter mouse strains for finer mapping of pvM subsets and lineage differentiation, and propose CX3CR1negative and CD45low as additional markers of intermediate pvMs for studying this heterogenous population.

Asplenia and hyposplenism can have multiple and complex causes and lead to morbidity and mortality, especially owing to overwhelming post-splenectomy infections. In this Primer, Lenti and colleagues review epidemiology, pathophysiology, diagnosis and management of these conditions, and discuss patient quality of life and future strategies.

Fabry and colleagues show that cribriform plate-resident lymphatic endothelial cells respond to neuroinflammatory signals by inducing functional changes that enhance antigen capture and presentation from the cerebrospinal fluid and promote leukocyte interactions within the central nervous system.

The eye and the brain are both recognized as immune-privileged sites. Research now indicates that responses in the eye mirror those in the central nervous system (CNS), offering major implications for the treatment of CNS cancers and infections.

Cerebrospinal fluid is now thought to drain through lymphatics instead of veins, but the routes the fluid takes from the subarachnoid space to cervical lymph nodes are unclear. Using advanced imaging, a recent study provides unprecedented anatomical details of lymphatic vessels draining cerebrospinal fluid along the nasopharynx.

Cribriform plate-resident lymphatic endothelial cells respond to neuroinflammatory signals by inducing functional changes that enhance the capture and presentation of antigens from the cerebrospinal fluid and promote leukocyte interactions within the brain-draining lymphatics.

Lane et al. have shown that interferon-γ (IFNγ)-mediated activation of the lymphatic vasculature, as a non-haematopoietic component of the tumour stroma, serves to limit local CD8⁺ T cell accumulation in melanoma in mice as a mechanism of immune suppression.