The Journal of Immunology

J Immunol. 2025 Mar 28:vkaf038. doi: 10.1093/jimmun/vkaf038. Online ahead of print. ABSTRACT Foam cells are dysfunctional, lipid-laden macrophages associated with chronic inflammation of diverse origin. The long-standing paradigm that foam cells are cholesterol-laden derives from atherosclerosis research. We previously showed that, in tuberculosis, foam cells surprisingly accumulate triglycerides. Here, we utilized bacterial (Mycobacterium tuberculosis), fungal … Read more

J Immunol. 2025 Mar 27:vkaf013. doi: 10.1093/jimmun/vkaf013. Online ahead of print. ABSTRACT Peptide presentation by major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I molecules enables CD8+ T lymphocytes to monitor the intracellular proteome of tissue cells. CD8+ T cell priming and acquisition of effector functions is affected by cognate peptide-MHC-I complex density on the cell surface, which … Read more

J Immunol. 2025 Mar 27:vkaf026. doi: 10.1093/jimmun/vkaf026. Online ahead of print. ABSTRACT Increased myeloid lineage production, termed myeloid skewing, leading to decreased tumor immunity, is a hallmark of aberrant hematopoiesis associated with cancer. It is believed that myeloid skewing may occur at the hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) level to elicit hematopoietic changes. However, … Read more

J Immunol. 2025 Mar 26:vkaf011. doi: 10.1093/jimmun/vkaf011. Online ahead of print. ABSTRACT The Hippo signaling pathway plays an important role in regulating host immune responses. However, few studies have explored its role in fish. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the mechanism by which the Hippo pathway regulates the expression of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) in … Read more

J Immunol. 2025 Mar 12:vkae050. doi: 10.1093/jimmun/vkae050. Online ahead of print. ABSTRACT Porphyromonas gingivalis (Pg) is a prevalent pathogen that promotes human periodontal disease (PD) and exacerbates systemic comorbidities such as atherosclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and Alzheimer’s disease. Pg produces nonphosphorylated tetra-acylated lipid A (NPLA) in its outer membrane (OM) that evades host Toll-like receptor 4 … Read more

J Immunol. 2025 Mar 24:vkaf002. doi: 10.1093/jimmun/vkaf002. Online ahead of print. ABSTRACT Currently, anti-inflammatory drugs fail to reduce pulmonary fibrosis and tissue remodeling in the clinic. Thus, there is an unmet need to develop novel antifibrotic drugs capable of reversing disease. Our lab has identified two novel mediators of pulmonary fibrosis belonging to the tumor … Read more

J Immunol. 2025 Mar 24:vkaf003. doi: 10.1093/jimmun/vkaf003. Online ahead of print. ABSTRACT Natural killer (NK) cell activation is regulated by killer cell immunoglobulin-like receptors (KIRs) that recognize human leukocyte antigen (HLA) class I molecules. While polymorphism in HLA can directly impact these interactions, the extent to which the HLA-associated peptide repertoire modulates NK cell function … Read more

J Immunol. 2025 Mar 22:vkaf023. doi: 10.1093/jimmun/vkaf023. Online ahead of print. ABSTRACT Acute graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) is a donor T cell driven complication and the leading cause of non-relapse mortality in patients receiving an allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (allo-HCT). Allogeneic donor T cells eradicate residual leukemia and prevent relapse via the graft-versus-leukemia (GVL) effect and … Read more

J Immunol. 2025 Mar 22:vkaf015. doi: 10.1093/jimmun/vkaf015. Online ahead of print. ABSTRACT Polyreactivity is the ability of antibodies to bind to various unrelated antigens with low affinities and is a frequent feature of HIV-1 broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs). Besides naturally occurring polyreactivity, human immune repertoires contain antibodies that can acquire polyreactivity de novo, by their … Read more

J Immunol. 2025 Mar 22:vkaf009. doi: 10.1093/jimmun/vkaf009. Online ahead of print. ABSTRACT Cytotoxic T cell (CTL) exhaustion is driven by chronic T cell receptor (TCR) stimulation, leading to a dysfunctional state of cells. Exhausted CTLs exhibit diminished effector function against chronic infections and cancers. Therefore, reducing CTL exhaustion may re-establish effective adaptive immune responses. One … Read more