Peptidoglycan metabolites are key microbe-associated molecular patterns that sensed by pattern recognition receptors. Modification of these microbiota-derived metabolites is providing new therapeutic leads towards infection, cancer and inflammatory diseases.

We examined whole-blood RNA-seq data from a total of 161 patients with systemic lupus erythematosus and 57 healthy donors, uncovering four distinct subtypes of patients with distinct gene expression patterns. Our study provides an innovative patient stratification framework, which is likely to be useful in future studies looking at different responses to treatments, potentially enabling improved therapeutic decisions and more reliable prediction of response to therapy.

Through analysis of serum cytokine levels, and whole blood transcriptional profiling, a correlation between IL-3 and interferon (IFN) (type I and type III) has been identified in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients. A correlation between both IFN-α and type III IFN and IL-3 in serum was seen, as was the presence of an ‘IL-3 gene signature’ in a majority of SLE patients, which correlated strongly with an IFN gene signature.

Metabolic pathways are important regulators of haematopoiesis, where metabolism controls maintenance and cell fate. This review will discuss lipid metabolism in the context of haematopoiesis, that is blood cell development. We will also discuss how these metabolic processes are affected by haematological malignancies.

Analysing an occult in-transit metastasis in a melanoma patient, we identify CD103⁺CD8⁺ T cells with a resident memory phenotype as the dominant T-cell subset. Such results support the emerging concept that CD103⁺CD8⁺ tissue-resident memory T cells are key mediators of cancer surveillance and imply an important function of these cells in controlling clinically occult micrometastases in humans.