The Dynamic Role of Cardiac Macrophages in Aging and Disease

The cardiac immune landscape dynamically changes in response to aging, hemodynamic stress, and myocardial injury. Here, we highlight key cardiac immune cell types, their role in reshaping the cellular landscape and promoting tissue remodeling following cardiac insults, and how understanding of these processes uncovers novel disease mechanisms that contribute to cardiac pathology.

Distinct subsets of cardiac macrophages reside within the heart and exhibit divergent functions in response to myocardial injury. Parsing cardiac macrophages based on developmental origin has served as a valuable approach to define functionally divergent populations of reparative (embryonic-derived, tissue resident) and inflammatory (monocyte-derived, recruited) cardiac macrophages. Single-cell transcriptomics and elucidation of the effector mechanisms that orchestrate macrophage functions has provided new and therapeutically tractable insights into the pathogenesis of numerous cardiac diseases. The immune landscape of the heart is dynamic and represents an important mediator of disease pathogenesis across an array of cardiac pathology. Elucidation of mechanisms that drive inflammatory monocyte/macrophage recruitment, activation, and effector responses may lead to the identification of new therapeutic targets.