News & Comment

Maternal-infant transmission provides a useful model for the study of immune factors associated with protection against the acquisition of human immunodeficiency virus and has emphasized the importance of CCL3 in protective immunity to this virus.

In honor of the fiftieth anniversary of Frank MacFarlane Burnet's presentation of the clonal selection theory, two of his former staff reminisce about their interactions with this Nobel prize–winning scientist.

There have been enormous advances in the field of immunology over the past 3 decades, and those advances have had a positive effect on many subspecialties of medicine. Opportunities for even more notable advances remain. However, present and projected budget constraints for the National Institutes of Health have created formidable challenges. This commentary addresses the opportunities and challenges for the field of immunology during a period of restricted budgets.

Immune responses to microbial challenge in various tissues are not the same. Organ-specific immune responses are adapted to maintain organ physiology.

In their own defense, tissues send a panoply of signals that initiate immunity and guide the choice of effector class. T_H1-T_H2 and T_reg is far too simple a representation of the breathtaking variety of the resulting responses.

The immune system has co-evolved with microbes that cause acute infectious disease. Immune responses must be appropriate to allow survival of both the individual and the species. These responses involve complex interactions that often go unmeasured.

Communicating about and comprehending immune responses and immunity will be facilitated by greater attention to semantic precision and consistency and increased willingness to engage with the full dimensionality and quantitative nature of immunological phenomena.