Imunologia 2.0 Onde está o futuro da imunologia?

Uma série de artigos, de muito boa qualidade, sobre as perspectivas  da imunologia está no número atual da Nature Immunology em comemoração aos seus 10 anos.

Veja a lista:

Innate immunity: quo vadis? por Ruslan Medzhitov

doi:10.1038/ni0710-551

Illuminating emergent activity in the immune system by real-time imaging, por Matthew F Krummel

doi:10.1038/ni0710-554

The future of mucosal immunology: studying an integrated system-wide organ, por Navkiran Gill, Marta Wlodarska & B Brett Finlay

doi:10.1038/ni0710-558

Understanding immunity requires more than immunology, por Kevin J Tracey

doi:10.1038/ni0710-56

Tools and landscapes of epigenetics, por Alexander Tarakhovsky

doi:10.1038/ni0710-565

O blog do The Scientist, ao comentar esta série de artigos, enfatizou a escolha entre o dirigir o foco para o sistema nervoso, para as mucosas ou aprofundar nas suas perguntas internas. O post (Immunology 2.0: brain, gut?) é interessante.

“Tracey's interests lie in the intersection of neurophysiology and immunology, which took the spotlight after the discovery that action potentials of the vagus nerve regulate the release of cytokines from the spleen and other organs. "That's just the beginning. I think there is going to be a lot of nerves and a lot of circuits that control the immune system," Tracey told The Scientist. If so, future medical devices to control these circuits may act like immune-system pacemakers, Tracey predicted, and when implanted along nerves could treat inflammatory diseases including arthritis, colitis, diabetes, heart disease and arteriosclerosis. 

B. Brett Finlay, in contrast, argues that the future of immunology lies in the gut. ... differences in intestinal microbes can have substantial effects on the immune system. Even which company a lab buys their mice from can influence the mice's gut microbiota, which in turn influences their immune system and immune response. "Knowing what we know now, it might explain why one lab finds one thing and another finds another," said Finlay. 

... Ruslan Medzhitov, an immunologist at the Yale University School of Medicine, argues the field should go back to basics ... 

These "gaps" include how the immune system protects against each different type of invader, how and why some immune responses are protective while others aren't, how bodies sense and interact with commensal and pathogenic microbes, and a better understanding of the body's black box of type two immunity -- the response to parasites and allergens, characterized by a stronger antibody response. "There is no knowledge of how allergens work," said Medzhitov. “

Muito bons textos. Melhor lê-los antes do próximo jogo da seleção.

Ilustração: Obtida do texto de Ruzlan Medzhitov.