The field of trained immunity, the ability of the innate immune system to develop long-term functional adaptations following infection or vaccination, has transformed how we understand immune memory, host defense, and inflammation. Once considered exclusive to adaptive immunity, immune “memory” is now recognized as a fundamental feature of innate immune cells, with far-reaching implications for infectious diseases, chronic inflammation, cancer, and vaccine design.
To mark more than a decade of progress in trained immunity research, an international team of scientists has curated a major Focus Issue on Trained Immunity in eLife. This special collection brings together over 30 original research articles, reviews, and perspectives, showcasing the scientific advances that have shaped the field and outlining key priorities for the next generation of discovery.
🔗 Focus Issue homepage:
https://elifesciences.org/collections/2d9894e6/focus-issue-trained-immunity
International Leadership and Meakins Contributions
The Focus Issue was assembled over nearly two years by a global editorial team, including early-career investigators alongside founding leaders of the field. The editorial provides a unifying framework for understanding how trained immunity reshapes innate immune responses through metabolic, epigenetic, and functional reprogramming, and why this matters for human health.
Members of the Meakins-Christie research community played a prominent role in this collection:
- Editorial: Kaufmann E, Sohrabi Y, Domínguez-Andrés J, Novakovic B, Netea MG, van der Meer JWM
A field-defining perspective that synthesizes the first decade of trained immunity research and articulates critical challenges and opportunities ahead, from translational applications to unresolved mechanistic questions.
🔗 https://elifesciences.org/articles/106029 - Review article: Tran BT, Jeyanathan V, Cao R, Kaufmann E, King KY.
A comprehensive review highlighting emerging concepts and experimental approaches in trained immunity, with relevance across infection, inflammation, and vaccinology. - Research article: Prevel R, Pernet E, Tran KA, Sadek A, Sadeghi M, Lapshina E, Jurado LF, Kristof AS, Moumni M, Poschmann J, Divangahi M.
Original research advancing our understanding of trained immune responses, further demonstrating the depth and breadth of contributions from the Meakins-Christie community.
Notably, many contributors to the Focus Issue are also speakers and participants in the September 2026 Trained Immunity Meeting, underscoring the strong integration between this editorial effort and the broader international research network driving the field forward.
Why Trained Immunity Matters
Trained immunity has rapidly evolved from a conceptual breakthrough into a clinically relevant framework with implications for:
- Improving vaccine efficacy and durability
- Understanding heterologous protection against infections
- Explaining maladaptive inflammation in chronic disease
- Informing host-directed therapies in cancer and infection
By reframing innate immunity as adaptable rather than static, this field opens new avenues for precision immunology and preventive medicine.
Looking Ahead
This eLife Focus Issue not only celebrates the scientific milestones of the past decade but also serves as a roadmap for future research, emphasizing interdisciplinary approaches, human-centered studies, and translational impact.
We are proud to see Meakins-Christie researchers contributing to, and helping lead, this global effort to redefine how we think about immune memory.
Read More
Focus Issue: Trained Immunity. Our latest Focus Issue looks at what we’ve learnt over the past decade and what’s next for the field of trained immunity. eLife November 2025
Kaufmann E, Sohrabi Y, Domínguez-Andrés J, Novakovic B, Netea MG, van der Meer JWM. Evolving our understanding of trained immunity. Elife. 2025 Nov 5;14:e106029.