Department of Experimental Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
School of Biomedical Engineering, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Front Immunol. 2021 May 6;12:681110. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2021.681110. eCollection 2021.
The discovery of innate lymphoid cells (ILCs) has revolutionized our understanding of innate immunity and immune cell interactions at epithelial barrier sites. Their presence and maintenance are critical for modulating immune homeostasis, responding to injury or infection, and repairing damaged tissues. To date, ILCs have been defined by a set of transcription factors, surface antigens and cytokines, and their functions resemble those of three major classes of helper T cell subsets, Th1, Th2 and Th17. Despite this, the lack of antigen-specific surface receptors and the notion that ILCs can develop in the absence of the thymic niche have clearly set them apart from the T-cell lineage and promulgated a dogma that ILCs develop directly from progenitors in the bone marrow. Interestingly however, emerging studies have challenged the BM-centric view of adult ILC development and suggest that ILCs could arise neonatally from developing T cell progenitors. In this review, we discuss ILC development in parallel to T-cell development and summarize key findings that support a T-cell-centric view of ILC ontogeny.
先天淋巴细胞 (ILC) 的发现彻底改变了我们对先天免疫和上皮屏障部位免疫细胞相互作用的理解。它们的存在和维持对于调节免疫稳态、应对损伤或感染以及修复受损组织至关重要。迄今为止，ILC 是通过一组转录因子、表面抗原和细胞因子来定义的，它们的功能类似于三大类辅助性 T 细胞亚群 Th1、Th2 和 Th17。尽管如此，缺乏抗原特异性表面受体以及 ILC 可以在没有胸腺龛位的情况下发育的观点，使它们明显有别于 T 细胞谱系，并形成了 ILC 直接从骨髓中的祖细胞发育而来的教条。然而，有趣的是，新兴的研究挑战了成人 ILC 发育的以骨髓为中心的观点，并表明 ILC 可以在新生儿期从发育中的 T 细胞祖细胞中产生。在这篇综述中，我们将 ILC 的发育与 T 细胞的发育进行了平行讨论，并总结了支持 ILC 发生的以 T 细胞为中心的观点的关键发现。
