Abstract
In the last decades the standing of the macrophage has improved from “the Garbage man of the body,” to the main “conductor” of inflammation and adaptive immunity. To this new fame has contributed the discovery that macrophages can polarize in different functional phenotypes that participate in distinct phases of the inflammatory reaction, from initiation to development and resolution, passing from effector cells to immunosuppressive functions. Macrophage plasticity relies on their capacity to react to a wide array of microenvironmental signals, encompassing endogenous and exogenous molecules (eg, cytokines, microbial components, and drugs), changes in the environmental conditions (eg, hypoxia), and danger signals released during tissue injury or diseases (eg, cancer).
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