The study of Innate Lymphoid Cells (ILCs) is a strong emergent field in immunology that is having a major impact on our understanding of the early events unfolding during an immune response. While subsets of ILCs (NK cells, LTi cells) have been recognized for more than 10 years, the realization that ILCs constitute a larger family that mirrors the activity of differentiated T cells has only become apparent in the last few years.

ILCs have now been shown to regulate defenses to infections, wound healing, allergy and adaptive immunity through their prompt reactivity to tissue infection and injury.