Innate immune regulation of adaptive immunity
www.frontiersin.org
June 7, 2026, 3:35 a.m.
This comprehensive review examines how innate immunity fundamentally regulates adaptive immune responses through multiple interconnected mechanisms. The authors elucidate three primary pathways: remodeling of antigen presentation and costimulation, cytokine-mediated T helper cell polarization, and metabolic-epigenetic programming associated with trained immunity. The framework identifies three critical regulatory dimensions of innate immune signaling: insufficient activation impairs pathogen control and adaptive priming, excessive persistent activation drives autoimmune inflammation, and type 2-biased signaling promotes allergic responses. By integrating molecular signaling, cell crosstalk, metabolic regulation, and epigenetic remodeling, this review provides a unified understanding of how innate immune dysfunction contributes to adaptive immune dysregulation in infection, autoimmunity, and allergic diseases, while identifying therapeutic targets including interferon pathways, inflammasomes, and metabolic programs.