REVIEW article
Front. Immunol.
Sec. Inflammation
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1665530
Fundamental and emerging insights into innate and adaptive immunity in inflammatory bowel diseases
Provisionally accepted
- Department of Systems Medicine, Faculty of Medicine and Surgery, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy
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Abstract Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) are chronic and disabling disorders of the gastrointestinal tract of unknown aetiology, in which the pathologic process is triggered by multiple environmental and genetic factors that activate an excessive innate and adaptive immune response against luminal antigens. In recent years, great progress has been made in the identification of factors/mechanisms underlying the amplification of the key immune steps in IBD tissue, and this has facilitated the development of several immune-related biotherapeutic compounds that have largely improved the management of the more severe forms of IBD. However, nearly half of these patients are refractory or intolerant to novel immunotherapeutics, indicating the need for further characterization of the IBD-associated detrimental immune response to develop new therapeutics. In this article, we review the available evidence about the contribution of innate and adaptive immune cells in the development of intestinal tissue damage. We also discuss the more recent findings in the field of IBD-associated immunity, which might help identify novel pathways to be manipulated for therapeutic purposes.
Keywords: ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease, mucosal immunology, Cytokines, IBD
Received: 14 Jul 2025; Accepted: 08 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Monteleone, Calisi, Salvatori and Marafini. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Giovanni Monteleone, gi.monteleone@med.uniroma2.it
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