The Multifaceted Functions of Neutrophils

By T. Mayadas, X. Cullere, C. Lowell. Annual Review of Pathology, 2013

1,251 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Neutrophils and neutrophil-like cells are the major pathogen-fighting immune cells in organisms ranging from slime molds to mammals. Central to their function is their ability to be recruited to sites of infection, to recognize and phagocytose microbes, and then to kill pathogens through a combination of cytotoxic mechanisms. These include the production of reactive oxygen species, the release of antimicrobial peptides, and the recently discovered expulsion of their nuclear contents to form neutrophil extracellular traps. Here we discuss these primordial neutrophil functions, which also play key roles in tissue injury, by providing details of neutrophil cytotoxic functions and congenital disorders of neutrophils. In addition, we present more recent evidence that interactions between neutrophils and adaptive immune cells establish a feed-forward mechanism that amplifies pathologic inflammation. These newly appreciated contributions of neutrophils are described in the setting of several inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.

Subfields: Immunology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/01859ca9e892596fabdb4f985c59273d14711994

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In Immunology

Citations in the corpus

Phenotypic diversity and plasticity in circulating neutrophil subpopulations in cancer. (2015, background): “Neutrophils play a well-established role in host defense, where they phagocytose and kill invading microorganisms by releasing activating cytokines, defensins, and reactive oxygen species (Heifets, 1982; Mayadas et al., 2014).”
Neutrophil: A Cell with Many Roles in Inflammation or Several Cell Types? (2018, background): “, 2014; Tecchio and Cassatella, 2016), and consequently neutrophils are capable of performing different cell functions depending on the tissues where they are found (Borregaard, 2010; Mayadas et al., 2014; Nauseef and Borregaard, 2014).”
Skin Acute Wound Healing: A Comprehensive Review (2019, background): “It is through these mechanisms that NETs immobilize and kill microorganisms [45, 52, 53].”
Exosome-Based Cell-Cell Communication in the Tumor Microenvironment (2018, background): “Neutrophils are also known as key mediators of innate immune response, as they are essential to protect the host against infection and to support tissue repair (Mayadas et al., 2014).”
Inflammation and its role in age-related macular degeneration (2016, background): “Activated neutrophils kill pathogens in several ways (1) by producing reactive oxygen species, (2) by releasing active peptides, and (3) by forming extracellular fibers called neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) through the release of granule proteins and chromatin [181, 182].”