Shaping up adaptive immunity: the impact of CCR7 and CXCR5 on lymphocyte trafficking

The effective onset of adaptive immune responses requires that naïve antigen-specific lymphocytes, being inherently rare throughout the body, rapidly encounter foreign antigens. This problem has been elegantly solved in evolution by inventing secondary lymphoid tissues as intersections in the migratory pathway of antigen-presenting dendritic cells and antigen-specific lymphocytes. Chemokines play a central role in guiding cell movements in the course of immune responses and in lymphoid system homeostasis. In particular, the chemokine receptors CCR7 and CXCR5 are key molecules for the entry of lymphocytes and dendritic cells into secondary lymphoid organs and their homing to T-cell and B-cell zones therein. CCR7 and CXCR5 are differentially expressed on the cell surface of lymphocytes and dendritic cells depending on the stage of cellular differentiation and activation, thus allowing these cells to change their homing capacity and prospective traffic routes.