For our first British Society of Immunology (BSI) and Lydia Becker Institute of Immunology and Inflammation-sponsored Inflammatory Remarks seminar of the academic year, we welcomed Henrique Veiga-Fernandes from the Champalimaud Institute in Lisbon. Henrique is a pioneer in dissecting neuro-immune crosstalk in the gastrointestinal tract and presented an overview of his labs work over the past 5 years. In particular, he described how subsets of innate lymphoid cells (ILCs) present within the gastrointestinal tract form distinct functional units with enteric glia and neurons. Signals derived from the enteric nervous system act via their receptors on ILCs to modulate their function and induce protective effector immune responses against a wide range of intestinal infections. The work in Dr. Veiga-Fernandes lab has shed light on the complex crosstalk between the nervous system and the immune system and has the potential to open up new therapeutic avenues for a wide range of infectious and chronic inflammatory diseases.

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