Extract
A key principle of emergency management is establishing an incident command centre. That's where information is gathered via integrated communications, plans are formulated, responsibilities assigned, and resources deployed. The immune system deals with microbial threats by this same approach, using organised lymphoid tissues. At the early stages of infections, conventional dendritic cells (cDCs) transmit intelligence on the nature of the threat to regional lymph nodes, which along with the spleen, tonsils and Peyer's patches, constitute the secondary lymphoid organs. Within lymph nodes, immune responses are optimised as large numbers of effector T cells search for their cognate antigens on the surfaces of cDCs, under the supervision of regulatory T cells. However, widespread and chronic threats require additional command centres closer to the action. “Tertiary lymphoid structures” is one name for these de novo frontline assemblages, along with “lymphoid follicles”. The process, termed lymphoid neogenesis, occurs within many organs in infectious, autoimmune and inflammatory disorders, and in transplanted organs and malignancies [1]. Because tertiary lymphoid structures (TLSs) develop in multiple lung diseases (table 1), defining their roles in pathogenesis is a crucial unmet goal that experimental models are well-suited to address.
Abstract
Organised lung lymphoid tissues are unnecessary to defend against bacteria in a mouse chronic infection model https://bit.ly/3adwW3Z
Footnotes
Conflict of interest: J.L. Curtis reports grants from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH; grants from the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Department of Defense; and personal fees from AstraZeneca, Ltd and Novartis AG, all outside the submitted work.
Support statement: Supported by the US Public Health Service via National Institutes of Healthgrants U01 HL137880, RO1 HL144849, and R01 HL144718; and by funding from the Clinical Science Research and Development Service, Department of Veterans Affairs. The opinions in this editorial are exclusively those of the author and do not reflect the official positions of the US Public Health Service or the Department of Veterans Affairs. Funding information for this article has been deposited with the Crossref Funder Registry.
- Received November 29, 2020.
- Accepted December 8, 2020.
- Copyright ©ERS 2021.