Defining trained immunity and its role in health and disease

Abstract

Immune memory is a defining feature of the acquired immune system, but activation of the innate immune system can also result in enhanced responsiveness to subsequent triggers. This process has been termed ‘trained immunity’, a de facto innate immune memory. Research in the past decade has pointed to the broad benefits of trained immunity for host defence but has also suggested potentially detrimental outcomes in immune-mediated and chronic inflammatory diseases. Here we define ‘trained immunity’ as a biological process and discuss the innate stimuli and the epigenetic and metabolic reprogramming events that shape the induction of trained immunity. Here a group of leaders in the field define our current understanding of ‘trained immunity’, which refers to the memory-type responses that occur in the innate immune system. The authors discuss our current understanding of the key epigenetic and metabolic processes involved in trained immunity and consider its relevance in immune-mediated diseases and cancer.

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Affiliated Institutions

• University of Southern Denmark DK
• Harvard University US
• Radboud Institute for Molecular Life Sciences NL
• University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School US
• Rockefeller University US
• McGill University Health Centre CA
• University of Bonn DE
• Howard Hughes Medical Institute US
• Broad Institute US
• Technische Universität Dresden DE
• University of Lisbon PT
• Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai US
• German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases DE
• University of Edinburgh GB
• Christie (Canada) CA
• Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Sainte-Justine CA
• The Queen's Medical Research Institute GB
• Massachusetts General Hospital US
• University of Chicago US
• University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus DE
• University of Cape Town ZA
• University Hospital Bonn DE
• Université de Montréal CA
• McGill University CA
• Cornell University US
• Radboud University Medical Center NL
• Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center US
• Imaging Center US
• Radboud University Nijmegen NL
• Eindhoven University of Technology NL

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