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Corporation

Historically, it has been understood that the immune response that targets a specific pathogen was governed by the "adaptive immune system", while innate immune cells, including macrophages, were merely considered as the initial natural barrier of the immune system. However, recent studies have unveiled that, akin to adaptive immune cells such as T cells and B cells, innate immune cells are also capable of developing short-term or long-term immune "memory". Several clinical trials have illustrated that this non-specific memory can also enhance the immune response against the second infection of the pathogen, even other unrelated pathogen, including COVID-19. In Netea et al. 2016 reviewed this phenomenon as the concept of "trained immunity". Accumulating evidence suggests that epigenetic reprogramming is a core driving element of trained immunity. Deciphering the mechanisms behind trained immunity and how to successfully harness it for vaccine development will be pivotal questions in this research field. This project is in collaboration with Senior Researcher Yutaro Kumagai at AIST and Professor Jun Kunisawa and his student Kei Ishida at Osaka University.

Epigenetic regulation on chromatin during macrophage hysteresis (memory) generation.