Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
As we celebrate 20 years since the launch of Nature Reviews Immunology, we reflect on how far the field of immunology has advanced over the past two decades.
In this Journal Club, Zitvogel and Kroemer discuss a landmark study that initiated the genetic and molecular characterization of the immune–microbiota crosstalk.
Eric Vivier describes the unexpected discovery of new populations of innate-like lymphocytes and the development of the innate lymphoid cell nomenclature.
Max Cooper recalls the discovery of variable lymphocyte receptors in lampreys and hagfish and explains the significance of this for understanding how adaptive immunity evolved in vertebrates.
Shane Crotty discusses three independent studies published in 2009 that characterized T follicular helper cells as a distinct subset of CD4+ T cells on the basis of selective expression of BCL6.
Katalin Karikó describes the discovery that replacing uridine with pseudouridine renders RNA non-immunogenic. This paved the way for developing mRNA for protein replacement therapy and, surprisingly, also for mRNA-based vaccine development.
Although it was known for decades that type I interferons are crucial for antiviral immunity, it was not until the discovery of cGAS and cGAMP signalling in 2013 that we understood how cytosolic DNA induces them in infected cells, as explained by Andrea Ablasser.
Eicke Latz recalls the discovery of the inflammasome in 2002 and how it revolutionized our understanding of inflammation and is now a target of new immunotherapeutics for inflammatory disease.
Mihai Netea tells us how the dichotomy of innate and adaptive immunity was blurred with the description of trained immunity in 2012 — a process by which innate immune cells and their progenitors store memory of past infections by epigenetic reprogramming.
Beth Stevens and Matthew Johnson discuss the unexpected finding that classical complement components guide synaptic pruning in the brain and are necessary for healthy brain function.
This Progress article provides an update on the COVID-19 vaccine effort in the light of ongoing vaccine efficacy studies and real-world data on vaccine effectiveness, including the impact of virus variants of concern and challenges for global deployment.
This Review from Jeff Rathmell and colleagues serves as a guide to immunologists on how to select the appropriate tools and techniques to interrogate metabolism in their experimental systems. The authors provide advice for avoiding common mistakes and on how best to employ metabolomics.
Mark Schmitt and Florian Greten describe the mechanisms by which chronic inflammation can initiate tumorigenesis and by which tumour-elicited and therapy-induced inflammation can promote colorectal cancer, as well as the role of extrinsic factors such as diet, the microbiota and the mycobiota.
In this Perspective, Murphy and Febbraio reflect on the advances that have been made in the past 20 years in developing therapies for cardiovascular and metabolic diseases that target the immune system. They also consider the potential of emerging immune-based therapies for these diseases.
In this Perspective, McInnes and Gravallese highlight the remarkable progress made over the past 20 years in treating immune-mediated inflammatory diseases. The available therapies have progressed from broad-spectrum immune modulators to highly targeted biological and small-molecule agents as our understanding of disease mechanisms has advanced.