Do tissue-resident immune cells constitute a critical cellular compartment, that needs to be taken into account, in any disease ? The point of view of Miriam Merad, MD, PhD, Oncologist, Professor in immunology, Director of the Precision Immunology Institute at Mount Sinai in New-York, and Member of the US National Academy of Science.
Transcript:
My work has been very focused on this lineage of cells: monocytes macrophages and dendritic cells. I’ve been interested in cancer, but beyond cancer, with my lab and colleagues in the same field, we are looking at many other diseases, including inflammatory diseases, but also metabolic diseases, etc. This is just because these resident immune cells are really part of every disease lesion. In every single disease site, whether it is diabetes, atherosclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, you see an accumulation of immune cells. Immune cells are always reacting to injury. So in any type of disease, if there is any type of damage, regardless of the cause, you will have this accumulation, first, of these macrophages, dendritic cells and monocytes that I study. And then those cells will recruit additional immune cells that I will talk about in a minute in the context of the tumor microenvironment. But this realization really for me – you know, I’m a MD by training, I’m an oncologist in fact, I was trained in Paris as an oncologist and then I moved to the States – but this realization to me it’s just extraordinary. Because we realized that modulating the immune system can have an impact on every single human disease. I can discuss that at the end because I think it has consequences that I had not anticipated enough, I think, earlier in my career.