The History of Trained Immunity

The idea of memory is something that has captivated immunologists, right, from the very start of our field. And actually, immunity in plants gave us some of the first hints of how they occur. In naive epithelial stem cells, we find that you have this inflammatory stimuli that essentially allows for accessibility to these loci. During a primary response, there's this dramatic transcription response during inflammation. But then when the tissue responses are over, it doesn't revert back to their pre-inflated state. They maintain a sense of accessibility which enables them to be recruited faster and more rapidly to trigger any type of immune response.