Eric Vivier – författare

Immunologists today are interested in all of the diverse cell-types involved in host defense and have a deeper appreciation of the importance of innate immune mechanisms as a first line of protection against pathogens. This volume thus discusses the isolation and functional characterization of cells involved in innate immunity in mouse and man, including mast cells and eosinophils. Other focuses include natural killer cells, methods in statistics, in vivo imaging, genome engineering, and mutagenesis and culture that are adapted to the study of innate immunity in these hosts. These are complemented with a series of chapters dealing with alternative models: plants, worms, mosquitoes, flies, and fish. Together, these approaches and models are being used to dissect the complex interplay between hosts and pathogens and contribute to developing strategies to help fight infection.  With chapters written by experts on the cutting-edge of this technology, Innate Immunity is an essential reference for immunologists, histologists, geneticists, and molecular biologists.

Tocelebrate the 40th anniversary of the discovery of Natural Killer (NK) cells,this volume focuses on the recent advances in our understanding of NK cell developmentand differentiation and their acquisition of functional properties, as well asthe latest models for NK-cell analysis in mice and applications in clinicalmedicine. NK cells have travelled a circuitous path from their initialdescription as ‘spontaneous killers’ (for some simply an experimental artifact)to being a bona fide subset of innatelymphoid cells with a complementary mode of action in immune defense and animportant mediator of immune reactivity in health and disease. Together, thesereviews provide a timely and concise picture of the evolution of NK cells asessential agents in immunity and as potent weapons against disease. This bookoffers an appealing and insightful resource for scientists and clinicians.

Natural Killer (NK) cells are large granular lymphocytes of the innate immune system. They are widespread throughout the body, being present in both lymphoid organs and non-lymphoid peripheral tissues. NK cells are involved in direct innate immune reactions against viruses, bacteria, parasites and other triggers of pathology, such as malignant transformation, all of which cause stress in affected cells. Importantly, NK cells also link the innate and adaptive immune responses, contributing to the initiation of adaptive immune responses and executing adaptive responses using the CD16 FcgRIIIA immunoglobulin Fc receptor. Such responses are mediated through two major effector functions, the direct cytolysis of target cells and the production of cytokines and chemokines. The authors focus here on the nature of recognition events by NK cells and address how these events are integrated to trigger these distinct and graded effector functions.