isolation-identification-extravascular-immune-cells

Isolation and Identification of Extravascular Immune Cells of the Heart

The immune system is an essential component of a healthy heart. The myocardium is home to a rich population of different immune cell subsets with ...

University Health Network (UHN)

University of Toronto

Peter Munk Cardiac Centre

Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research

As a greater proportion of patients survive their initial cardiac insult, medical systems worldwide are being faced with an ever-growing need to understand the mechanisms behind the pathogenesis of chronic heart failure (HF). There is a wealth of information about the role of inflammatory cells and pathways during acute injury and the reparative processes that are subsequently activated. We discuss the different causes that lead to chronic HF development and how the sum of initial inflammatory and reparative responses only sets the trajectory for disease progression. Unfortunately, comparatively little is known about the contribution of the immune system once the trajectory has been set, and chronic HF has been established-which clinically represents the majority of patients. It is known that chronic HF is associated with circulating inflammatory cytokines that can predict clinical outcomes, yet the causative role inflammation plays in disease progression is not well defined, and the majority of clinical trials that target aspects of inflammation in patients with chronic HF have largely been negative. This review will present what is currently known about inflammation in chronic HF in both humans and animal models as a means to highlight the gap in our knowledge base that requires further examination. 

Chronic Heart Failure and Inflammation: What Do We Really Know?

Innate and adaptive immune cells modulate heart failure pathogenesis during viral myocarditis, yet their identities and functions remain poorly defined. We utilized a combination of genetic fate mapping, parabiotic, transcriptional, and functional analyses and demonstrated that the heart contained two major conventional dendritic cell (cDC) subsets, CD103 and CD11b, which differentially relied on local proliferation and precursor recruitment to maintain their tissue residency. Following viral infection of the myocardium, cDCs accumulated in the heart coincident with monocyte infiltration and loss of resident reparative embryonic-derived cardiac macrophages. cDC depletion abrogated antigen-specific CD8 T cell proliferative expansion, transforming subclinical cardiac injury to overt heart failure. These effects were mediated by CD103 cDCs, which are dependent on the transcription factor BATF3 for their development. Collectively, our findings identified resident cardiac cDC subsets, defined their origins, and revealed an essential role for CD103 cDCs in antigen-specific T cell responses during subclinical viral myocarditis.

Slava Epelman

Toronto General Hospital Research Institute

University Health Network (UHN)

Isolation and Identification of Extravascular Immune Cells of the Heart

Slava Epelman

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University Health Network (UHN)

Isolation and Identification of Extravascular Immune Cells of the Heart

Toronto General Hospital Research Institute