Current Understanding on the Metabolism of Neutrophils

Jae-Han Jeon; Chang-Won Hong; Eun Young Kim; Jae Man Lee

doi:10.4110/in.2020.20.e46

Current Understanding on the Metabolism of Neutrophils

Immune Netw. 2020 Dec 24;20(6):e46. doi: 10.4110/in.2020.20.e46. eCollection 2020 Dec.

Authors

Jae-Han Jeon^{1

2}, Chang-Won Hong^{2

3}, Eun Young Kim⁴, Jae Man Lee⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Internal Medicine, School of Medicine, Kyungpook National University, Daegu 41944, Korea.
² Kyungpook National University Hospital, Bio-Medical Research Institute, Daegu 41940, Korea.
³ Department of Physiology, School of Medicine, Kyungpook National University, Daegu 41944, Korea.
⁴ Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Cell and Matrix Research Institute, School of Medicine, Kyungpook National University, Daegu 41944, Korea.

Abstract

Neutrophils are innate immune cells that constitute the first line of defense against invading pathogens. Due to this characteristic, they are exposed to diverse immunological environments wherein sources for nutrients are often limited. Recent advances in the field of immunometabolism revealed that neutrophils utilize diverse metabolic pathways in response to immunological challenges. In particular, neutrophils adopt specific metabolic pathways for modulating their effector functions in contrast to other immune cells, which undergo metabolic reprogramming to ensure differentiation into distinct cell subtypes. Therefore, neutrophils utilize different metabolic pathways not only to fulfill their energy requirements, but also to support specialized effector functions, such as neutrophil extracellular trap formation, ROS generation, chemotaxis, and degranulation. In this review, we discuss the basic metabolic pathways used by neutrophils and how these metabolic alterations play a critical role in their effector functions.

Keywords: Immunology; Immunometabolism; Innate immunity; Metabolism; Neutrophils.

Publication types

Review