Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Neutrophils are a type of innate immune cell that contains distinctive cytoplasmic granules and a nucleus that is divided into three segments. They are the most abundant immune cell type in the blood. Neutrophils are rapidly recruited to infected tissues and can engulf bacteria directly or produce toxic antimicrobial mediators.
Tuz et al. report that stroke and myocardial infarction induce the release of neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs), triggering the loss of B cells and a decrease in immunoglobulin A secretion, and that inhibition of NETs prevents the loss of immunoglobulin A in mice and in patients with stroke.
Cupedo and colleagues show that neutrophils promote a tumor-supportive microenvironment via a self-amplifying interaction between neutrophils and bone marrow stromal cells. This scenario creates a promyeloma niche that is difficult to treat despite targeted therapies directed at the myeloma cells.
This study shows that NETosis is an auto-amplified process whereby NETotic neutrophils can induce secondary NETosis in proximal naïve neutrophils, resulting in spatial propagation of NETs.
Gasdermin D (GSDMD) is a pore forming protein activated by inflammasome derived caspases. Here the authors characterize the function of GSDMD in mouse influenza virus infection and show that immunopathology is reduced in the absence of GSDMD and involves changes in neutrophil function.
Maturation of innate immune cells is a graded stereotypic process which is often conserved across species. Here authors label distinct neutrophil leukocyte developmental stages via generating combinations of transgenic zebrafish reporter strains, followed by transcriptome analysis of different neutrophil maturation stages and comparison to the gene expression profile of developing neutrophils from humans and mice.
In this recent study, He et al. establish that chronic stress promotes metastasis through stress-induced formation of neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs).
Investigation of neutrophil heterogeneity in tumours reveals the irreversible programming of long-lived, pro-angiogenic neutrophils that drive tumour progression.