Microenvironmental impact on lung cell homeostasis and immunity during infection

Abstract

The lung is a vital organ devoted mainly to gas exchange with an external environment that may be contaminated with various life-threatening pathogens and inert particles. Lung immunity must be permanently balanced between costimulatory and coinhibitory signals, thus controlling potential pathogens while avoiding detrimental inflammation. The lung harbors macrophages and dendritic cells (myeloid and plasmacytoid), which orchestrate the primary defense against microbial invaders. During an infection involving host–microbial synapses, microbes either escape by using host cell physiology or are eliminated by a robust immune response. We thus focus on the dynamics of such cellular interactions within the lung and stress the critical role played by airway epithelial cells in modulating immunity.

Keywords::

• alveolar macrophage
• Bacillus anthracis
• dendritic cell
• epithelial cell
• Francisella tularensis
• lung immunity
• migration
• mucosal immunity
• Mycobacterium tuberculosis
• Yersinia pestis

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Brad Stiles for fruitful discussion.

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.