ICB Special Feature: Highlights of 2024

This Special Feature brings you the “Highlights of 2024”, a collection of short articles to bring you up to date on major advances in immunology research published in 2024. Each highlight article summarizes the key papers that drove new discoveries in a specific area of immunology. Pankhurst and Linterman¹ highlight the latest discoveries in the germinal center response and new opportunities for the development of more effective vaccines and immunotherapies. Flaman et al.² focus on key studies that provide critical insights into the development, differentiation, and longevity of antibody secreting cells in health and disease. In Lee and Reed,³ we review recent findings on age-associated B cells, the discovery of their transcriptional regulator, and the evidence for a pathogenic role in autoimmune disease. Valentini et al.⁴ discuss metabolic pathways that alter regulatory T-cell function and differentiation and their potential as therapeutic targets in inflammatory niches, tumors and autoimmune disease. McEwan et al.⁵ update us on the growing evidence that the most important risk gene for Alzheimer's disease, the apolipoprotein E variant, APOE4 drives immune dysregulation causing neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration. Eberl⁶ summarizes the role of γδ T cells in tissues during sepsis while referring to 58 Taylor Swift song titles—how many can you find? 2024 was also a big year for innate lymphoid cells (ILC), with Shen et al.⁷ discussing tissue-specific roles for ILC3, highlighting metabolic and checkpoint molecules as targets for immunotherapy. Shajan et al.⁸ summarizes the critical signaling pathways, epigenetic modifications and cytokines-regulating natural killer (NK) cell function and survival. Bourel et al.⁹ review the latest strategies to enhance NK cell cytotoxicity and memory for cell-based cancer therapy. Finally, Jose et al.¹⁰ discuss advances and clinical trials for antibody–drug conjugates, which combine monoclonal antibody specificity with cytotoxic agents to selectively deliver potent drugs to tumor cells.

Whether you are reliving some of 2024's key findings in your field or learning about the major advances in another area, this Special Feature will get you up to date and ready for another exciting year or immunology.

The author declares no conflicts of interest.

Joanne H Reed: Conceptualization; writing – original draft; writing – review and editing.