Stressed out neutrophils drive metastasis.

Stress hormones can contribute to cancer progression, but how immune cells play a role in this process is unclear. In a recent study in Cancer Cell, He et al. showed that glucocorticoids potentiate metastasis by skewing neutrophils toward pro-tumorigenic functions.

The glycobiology of uropathogenic E. coli infection: the sweet and bitter role of sugars in urinary tract immunity.

Urinary tract infections (UTI) are among the most prevalent infectious diseases and the most common cause of nosocomial infections, worldwide. Uropathogenic E. coli (UPEC) are responsible for approximately 80% of all UTI, which most commonly affect the bladder. UPEC colonize the urinary tract by ascension of the urethra, followed by cell invasion, and proliferation inside and outside urothelial cells, thereby causing symptomatic infections and quiescent intracellular reservoirs that may lead to recurrence. Sugars, or glycans, are key molecules for host-pathogen interactions, and UTI are no exception. Surface glycans regulate many of the events associated with UPEC adhesion and infection, as well as induction of the host immune response. While the bacterial protein FimH binds mannose-containing host glycoproteins to initiate infection and UPEC-secreted polysaccharides block immune mechanisms to favour intracellular replication, host glycans on the urothelial surface and on secreted glycoproteins prevent or limit infection by inhibiting UPEC adhesion. Given the importance of glycans during UTI, here we review the glycobiology of UPEC infection to highlight fundamental sugar-mediated processes of immunological interest for their potential clinical applications. Interdisciplinary approaches incorporating glycomics and infection biology may help to develop novel non-antibiotic-based therapeutic strategies for bacterial infections as the spread of antimicrobial-resistant uropathogens is currently threatening modern healthcare systems.

The Immune System Fails to Mount a Protective Response to Gram-Positive or Gram-Negative Bacterial Prostatitis.

Bacterial prostatitis affects 1% of men, with increased incidence in the elderly. Acute bacterial prostatitis frequently progresses to chronicity, marked by recurrent episodes interspersed with asymptomatic periods of variable duration. Antibiotic treatment is standard of care; however, dissemination of antimicrobially resistant uropathogens threatens therapy efficacy. Thus, development of nonantibiotic-based approaches to treat chronic disease is a priority. Currently, why chronic prostatitis arises is unclear, as the immune response to prostate infection is incompletely understood. As 80% of prostatitis cases are caused by Gram-negative uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC) or Gram-positive Enterococcus faecalis, we used a mouse transurethral instillation model to address the hypothesis that an innate immune response fails to develop following prostate infection with these uropathogens, leading to chronic disease. Surprisingly, infection induced robust proinflammatory cytokine expression and myeloid cell infiltration. Following a second infection, cytokine responses and innate cell infiltration were largely comparable to primary infection. Characteristic of memory responses, more lymphoid cells infiltrated the prostate in a second infection compared with a first, suggesting that adaptive immunity develops to eliminate the pathogens. Unexpectedly, bacterial burden in prostates challenged with either UPEC or E. faecalis was equal or greater than primary infection despite that a protective adaptive response to UPEC infection was evident in the bladder of the same animals. Our findings support that chronic or recurrent prostatitis develops despite strong innate immune responses and may be the result of a failure to develop immune memory to infection, pointing to actionable targets for immunotherapy.