Eric Topol maps macrophage functional programs: cell states are combinatorial, not types
EricTopol · x · 2026-10-16
Eric Topol spotlights a review infographic on macrophages in blood and tissue, mapping nine core functional programs — inflammatory, interferon-responsive, antigen-presenting, monocyte recruitment, immunosuppressive, scavenger/lipid-associated, homeostatic, and fibrotic remodeling — each with its marker genes.
The key framing: macrophage states are combinatorial uses of these programs rather than discrete types. Tumor-associated macrophages (TAM) show high scavenger/lipid plus immunosuppressive programs, disease-associated microglia (DAM) pair high scavenger activity with low inflammation, and tissue-resident macrophages (RTM) are dominated by homeostatic programs — with implications for targeted interventions in disease.
More from Research
- Tsinghua professor's ApexIntelligence raises $50M to build self-evolving foundation models — DeryaTR_ · 2026-10-16
- Anders Sandberg on fluid computation: error budgets tighten quadratically over time — anderssandberg · 2026-10-16
- How the fluid computation works: force field advects particle to 0/1 boxes — anderssandberg · 2026-10-16
- FlashAttention creator Tri Dao joins Radical Numerics as scientific advisor — exnx · 2026-10-16
- SAIR Launches Open Math OS, Offering Free Compute and 100+ Tools for Community-Owned Math AI — Thom_Wolf · 2026-10-16
- JapanFold Claims One Tenstorrent Server Beats an Nvidia DGX B200 on Bio Models at a Third of the Price — DavidBennett__ · 2026-10-16