Immunity by equilibrium

International audienceThe classical model of immunity posits that the immune system reacts to pathogens and injury and restores homeostasis. Indeed, a century of research has uncovered the means and mechanisms by which the immune system recognizes danger and regulates its own activity. However, this classical model does not fully explain complex phenomena, such as tolerance, allergy, the increased prevalence of inflammatory pathologies in industrialized nations and immunity to multiple infections. In this Essay, I propose a model of immunity that is based on equilibrium, in which the healthy immune system is always active and in a state of dynamic equilibrium between antagonistic types of response. This equilibrium is regulated both by the internal milieu and by the microbial environment. As a result, alteration of the internal milieu or microbial environment leads to immune disequilibrium, which determines tolerance, protective immunity and inflammatory pathology

In search of a new paradigm for protective immunity to TB

Author ManuscriptClinical trials of vaccines against Mycobacterium tuberculosis are well under way and results are starting to come in. Some of these results are not so encouraging, as exemplified by the latest Aeras-422 and MVA85A trials. Other than empirically determining whether a vaccine reduces the number of cases of active tuberculosis, which is a daunting prospect given the chronic nature of the disease, we have no way of assessing vaccine efficacy. Therefore, investigators seek to identify biomarkers that predict vaccine efficacy. Historically, focus has been on the production of interferon-γ by CD4(+) T cells, but this has not been a useful correlate of vaccine-induced protection. In this Opinion article, we discuss recent advances in our understanding of the immune control of M. tuberculosis and how this knowledge could be used for vaccine design and evaluation.The authors are supported by the following grants from the US National Institutes of Heath (NIH) and US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID): R21AI100766, R01AI085669, R01AI098637, and R01AI10672

The immunology of asthma

Asthma is a common disease that affects 300 million people worldwide. Given the large number of eosinophils in the airways of people with mild asthma, and verified by data from murine models, asthma was long considered the hallmark T helper type 2 (T(H)2) disease of the airways. It is now known that some asthmatic inflammation is neutrophilic, controlled by the T(H)17 subset of helper T cells, and that some eosinophilic inflammation is controlled by type 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2 cells) acting together with basophils. Here we discuss results from in-depth molecular studies of mouse models in light of the results from the first clinical trials targeting key cytokines in humans and describe the extraordinary heterogeneity of asthma

Conducting Polymer Nanomaterials and Their Applications

A paradigm shift takes place in the fabrication of conducting polymers from bulky features with microsize to ultrafine features with nanometer range. Novel conducting polymer nanomaterials require the potential to control synthetic approaches of conducting polymer on molecular and atomic levels. In this article, the synthetic methodology of conducting polymer has been briefly considered with chemical oxidation polymerization and electrochemical polymerization. The recent achievements in the fabrication of conducting polymer nanomaterials have been extensively reviewed with respect to soft template method, hard template method and template-free method. It also details the morphological spectrum of conducting polymer nanomaterials such as nanoparticle, core-shell nanomaterial, hollow nanosphere, nanofiber/nanorod, nanotube, thin film and nanopattern and nanocomposite. In addition, their applications are discussed under nanometer-sized dimension.This work has been financially supported by the Brain Korea 21 program of the Korean Ministry of Education and the Hyperstructured Organic Materials Research Center supported by Korea Science and Engineering Foundation