Adaptive Immunity to Fungi

Only a handful of the more than 100,000 fungal species on our planet cause disease in humans, yet the number of life-threatening fungal infections in patients has recently skyrocketed as a result of advances in medical care that often suppress immunity intensely. This emerging crisis has created pre...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Annual review of immunology 2012-01, Vol.30 (1), p.115-148
Main Authors: Wüthrich, Marcel, Deepe, George S, Klein, Bruce
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptive Immunity
Animals
Cell Differentiation - immunology
chemokine receptors
chemokines
Chemokines - immunology
Cytokines - immunology
Defense mechanisms
Dendritic cells
Dendritic Cells - immunology
Differentiation
Fungi
Fungi - immunology
Humans
Immunity
Immunity, Innate
Immunoglobulins - immunology
Infection
Lymphocytes B
Lymphocytes T
Mycoses - immunology
pattern-recognition receptors
Receptors, Pattern Recognition - immunology
Receptors, Pattern Recognition - metabolism
Signal Transduction
T lymphocytes
T-Lymphocytes - cytology
T-Lymphocytes - immunology
T-Lymphocytes - metabolism
Therapeutic applications
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Summary:Only a handful of the more than 100,000 fungal species on our planet cause disease in humans, yet the number of life-threatening fungal infections in patients has recently skyrocketed as a result of advances in medical care that often suppress immunity intensely. This emerging crisis has created pressing needs to clarify immune defense mechanisms against fungi, with the ultimate goal of therapeutic applications. Herein, we describe recent insights in understanding the mammalian immune defenses deployed against pathogenic fungi. The review focuses on adaptive immune responses to the major medically important fungi and emphasizes how dendritic cells and subsets in various anatomic compartments respond to fungi, recognize their molecular patterns, and signal responses that nurture and shape the differentiation of T cell subsets and B cells. Also emphasized is how the latter deploy effector and regulatory mechanisms that eliminate these nasty invaders while also constraining collateral damage to vital tissue.
ISSN:0732-0582
1545-3278
DOI:10.1146/annurev-immunol-020711-074958