Issues

Drurey et al. show that excretory/secretory products from the parasitic helminth Heligmosomoides polygyrus suppress the host-protective small intestinal epithelial response.

Mutual antagonism between the transcriptional repressors Bcl-6 and Blimp-1 has been appreciated as a key mechanistic determinant of lymphoid differentiation programs. Now, in this issue of JEM, Ciucci et al. demonstrate that this relationship is central to the generation of T cell memory.

Evrard et al. find that sphingosine 1-phosphate receptor 5 (S1PR5) powerfully impairs tissue-resident memory T cell (T_RM cell) formation, and that tissue-derived TGF-β limits S1pr5 expression by infiltrating T cells.

Maud Tusseau and Alexandre Belot highlight work from He et al. showing that P2RY8 prevents the expansion of DNA-reactive B cells by restraining B cell mobility and activation within the germinal center.

Li et al. show that the transcriptional repressor DREAM regulates neutrophil adhesion and recruitment to sites of TNF-α–induced inflammation, providing a potential mechanism underlying heterogeneity in neutrophil function.

Hao Wu, Li Wang, and Michael A. Crackower discuss recent advances in structure-based drug design to target NLRP3 and NLRP1.

Inflammasomes are cytosolic sensing machineries that play a critical role in antimicrobial defense. In recent years, great progress has been made in characterizing the molecular mode of action and functional role of the human inflammasome sensor NLRP1.

Pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) activate immune cells upon sensing microbes or tissue damage. To prevent immunopathology, these patterns should not always lead to activation. The authors propose a group of inhibitory PRRs that recognize endogenous and microbial patterns to provide context.

The intestinal helminth Heligmosomoides polygyrus suppresses development of epithelial tuft cells, which are essential for the type 2 immune response, through secreted factors that block tuft cells both in intestinal organoids and when administered in vivo.

Single-cell RNA and ATAC sequencing identify transcriptomic and epigenomic features of acute- and memory-phase virus-responding CD4⁺ T cells and show that, unlike follicular helper T cells, memory CD4⁺ T cells develop despite lacking Bcl6 and Blimp1 transcription factors.

By manipulating and quantifying the dynamics of PU.1 protein expression in live differentiating adult HSPCs in vitro, Ahmed et al. report that PU.1 upregulation is not caused by fast direct autoregulation but occurs as a later consequence of hematopoietic differentiation.

S1PR5 impairs T_RM cell differentiation by limiting T cell entry and promoting T cell egress from peripheral tissues. Local TGF-β signaling coordinates suppression of the T-bet–ZEB2–S1PR5 emigration axis, thus enforcing tissue residency.

Somatic mutations in P2RY8 that promote B cell growth and migration are common in lymphomas. He et al. describe germline loss-of-function P2RY8 variants in SLE and uncover novel functions of P2RY8 in immunological tolerance through restraining plasma cell development and promoting B cell–negative selection.

Using in vivo intravital microscopy and biochemical and cell biological studies, we demonstrate that neutrophil DREAM enhances neutrophil adhesive function in vascular inflammation. Our results suggest that targeting DREAM might be a novel therapeutic strategy to attenuate excessive neutrophil recruitment in inflammatory diseases.

Metastasis is the leading cause of death in cancer patients. We discovered that proteolytic processing of endothelial TNFR1 by the metalloprotease ADAM17 is essential for metastases formation. Based on our findings, we present a novel therapeutic approach to target metastasis.

Computational screening identifies a novel agonist for NR2F1, a master activator of cancer cell dormancy. Agonist-mediated activation of NR2F1 induces a novel long-lived dormancy program with neural crest-like features and prevents disseminated squamous carcinoma cancer cell progression to overt metastasis.

WEE1 inhibition modulates the efficacy of cancer immunotherapy by regulating dsRNA and interferon responses, which increases recruitment of anti-tumor T cells with concurrent PD-L1 elevation. This study provides a rationale for combination strategies between WEE1 inhibitors and anti–PD-L1 therapies.

Single-cell transcriptomics from paired autologous peripheral and tumor lymphocytes from melanoma patients reveal an understudied population of metabolically active, dysfunctional CD8 T cells. This subpopulation is associated with immunotherapy resistance and was leveraged to develop a therapeutic response predictive model.

Fetal alloantigens prime maternal CD8 T cells during pregnancy, but the fate and function of these cells after pregnancy remain unclear. These studies demonstrate that pregnancy-primed CD8 T cells differentiate into exhausted T cells (T_EX) that share molecular circuitry with T_EX that arise in chronic infection and cancer.

A stem-loop RNA (SLR) RIG-I agonist is effective in preventing and treating acute SARS-CoV-2 infection in mice. A single injection of SLR can clear chronic SARS-CoV-2 in immunocompromised mice. SLR is effective against the ancestral virus as well as variants of concern.

3K3A-APC has shown promise in human ischemic stroke. Present data support that 3K3A-APC could very well be the first therapeutic agent at our disposal to prevent and/or treat white matter strokes, a major cause of human disability, including cognitive dysfunction.

Dodiya et al. characterize an APPPS1-21 mouse model of Aβ amyloidosis with an antibiotic-perturbed microbiome. Fecal transplantation approaches and microglial depletion studies are employed to establish the causality between the gut microbiota, microglia, Aβ, and neurodegeneration.

Using mice engineered to exhibit specific defects in distinct signaling pathways downstream of STING, Li et al. demonstrate that TBK1, but not IRF3, recruitment to STING mediates autoinflammatory arthritis caused by DNase II deficiency.

Regenerative inflammation in skeletal muscle drives macrophage specification via a regeneration-promoting program. A growth factor–expressing macrophage population develops, producing GDF-15 under the control of RXR and PPARγ. GDF-15 acts as an autocrine and paracrine factor coordinating myoblast proliferation and myeloid cell invasion and activity.