Macrophages and viruses: a complex and instructive relationship
In many tissues and mucosa, macrophages mount the first line of defense against a large diversity of viruses and constitute an efficient arm of our innate immunity. Paradoxically, many viruses and pathogens succeed to replicate in macrophages. The lab currently focuses on the following questions.
- i) How do myeloid cells sense viruses, and how is this sensing regulated?
- ii) How can viruses replicate in myeloid cells despite numerous cellular defenses and the response they elicit?
We have now extended our research to viruses other than HIV-1 to understand how macrophages cope with many pathogens and to decipher unknown molecular mechanisms of defense.
Figure 1: Confocal immunofluorescence microscopy of primary HIV-2-infected human macrophages. Actin (phalloidin in purple), nucleus (DAPI in turquoise blue), HIV-2 (in yellow). See the numerous syncytia induced by HIV-2.
Figure 2: Confocal microscopy imaging of primary human macrophages infected with HIV-1 (green) and transduced with Life-act cherry (red). See the compartments where virions accumulate in green and the numerous podosomes in red.