The interplay between central metabolism and innate immune responses

A growing body of recent studies bring into light an important cross-talk between immune response and metabolism not only at the level of the organism as a whole, but also at the level of the individual cells. Cellular bioenergetics functions not only as a power plant to fuel up the cells, but the intermediate metabolites are shown to play an important role to modulate cellular responses. It is especially the pathways through which a cell metabolizes glucose that have been recently shown to influence both innate and adaptive immune responses, with oxidative phosphorylation used by resting or tolerant cells, while aerobic glycolysis (also termed ‘Warburg effect’) fueling activated cells. In this review we will address how the center metabolism shifts upon activation in the innate immune cells and how the intermediate metabolites modulate the function of immune cells.