Louwe et al show that fate of inflammation-elicited peritoneal macrophages is regulated by the inflammatory environment
Paper by Tissue Repair student Pieter Louwe shows that recruited macrophages that colonize the post-inflammatory peritoneal niche convert into functionally divergent resident cells.
Pieter Louwe, a Wellcome Trust Tissue Repair PhD student who recently successfully passed his viva voce, has published his PhD research performed in the Jenkins lab at the Centre for Inflammation Research in Nature Communications. Pieter investigated how the fate of monocyte-derived macrophages recruited to sites of inflammation is regulated.
In the paper Pieter and colleagues report that macrophages elicited into the peritoneal cavity during mild inflammation persist long-term, but are retained in an immature transitory state of differentiation due to the presence of enduring resident macrophages. By contrast, severe inflammation results in ablation of resident macrophages and a protracted phase wherein the cavity is incapable of sustaining a resident phenotype, yet ultimately elicited cells acquire a mature resident identity. These macrophages also have transcriptionally and functionally divergent features that result from inflammation-driven alterations to the peritoneal cavity micro-environment and, to a lesser extent, effects of origin and time-of-residency. Hence, rather than being predetermined, the fate of inflammation-elicited peritoneal macrophages seems to be regulated by the environment.