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Nearly a decade ago, the concept of inflammasomes was introduced. Since then, the biochemical characterization of the inflammasomes has led to a richer understanding of innate immune responses in the context of infection and sterile inflammation. This has provided the rationale for successful clinical therapies for a spectrum of hereditary periodic fever syndromes and potentially for some metabolic pathologies.
NF-κB-mediated inflammatory biology can be formulated as the following five states: latency, induction, response, resolution and pathology. The first four involve carefully tuned molecular processes; pathology is the loss of control.
Naive lymphocytes have a finite lifespan and are continually replaced by input from generative organs. In contrast, memory cells or their progeny can last a lifetime. The expanded populations of memory cells and their more widespread distribution provide protection against recurrent infection.
This Focus issue brings together the cornucopia of strategies that pathogens and tumors utilize to avoid immune recognition. Here Rodney Phillips discusses some general principles that emerge from this analysis.