Journal of Inflammation Research

Immune Dysregulation and Organ Crosstalk in Sepsis: From Mechanisms and Endotypes to Precision Therapy

The Journal of Inflammation Research is pleased to welcome you to submit your research to the Article Collection "Immune Dysregulation and Organ Crosstalk in Sepsis: From Mechanisms and Endotypes to Precision Therapy".

Sepsis is a life-threatening syndrome in which the host response to infection becomes biologically dysregulated. Hyperinflammatory and immunosuppressive programs may coexist or evolve over time, while immune cells, vascular endothelium, and parenchymal tissues exchange signals that shape organ injury and recovery. These host-response states vary markedly among patients and organs, helping explain divergent clinical trajectories. Single-cell, spatial, multi-omics, and systems-immunology approaches now enable deeper resolution of this heterogeneity. This Collection therefore focuses on host-response biology in sepsis, particularly immune-state transitions, organ crosstalk, and the biological basis of clinically meaningful sepsis endotypes.

Broadly applied immunomodulatory therapies for sepsis have rarely produced consistent clinical benefit, in part because sepsis comprises multiple biological states rather than a single inflammatory phenotype. Patients differ in innate activation, adaptive immune dysfunction, endothelial injury, immunometabolic reprogramming, and organ-specific responses, and these programs change during critical illness. Defining immune endotypes and linking them to organ crosstalk may bridge mechanistic discovery and patient stratification. Integrating dynamic immune monitoring with biomarkers, single-cell and multi-omics profiling, and computational endotyping could identify treatment-responsive subgroups and therapeutic windows, supporting mechanism-informed and biomarker-guided precision immunomodulation.

This Collection welcomes mechanistic, translational, and clinically anchored studies of host-response heterogeneity in sepsis. Priority areas include innate and adaptive immune dysfunction; neutrophil, monocyte/macrophage, dendritic-cell, and lymphocyte states; immunometabolic reprogramming; endothelial-immune and neuroimmune interactions; lung-kidney, gut-lung, kidney-heart, brain-immune, liver-immune, and other inter-organ signaling networks; single-cell, spatial, and multi-omics mapping; biomarker-based and computational endotyping; and precision immunomodulatory or host-directed therapies. Mechanism-linked blood-purification studies are welcome when tied to immune phenotype or treatment-response stratification. Pathogen identification, microbiological diagnostics, antimicrobial resistance, and stewardship are not primary topics unless directly connected to host-response biology or immune-guided therapy. Original Research and Review articles are especially encouraged.

Keywords: Sepsis; Immune Dysregulation; Organ Crosstalk; Sepsis Endotypes; Precision Immunomodulation

Meet the Guest Advisors

Dr Zhongyi Sun is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Critical Care Medicine at Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, China, and Section Editor for Sepsis and Systemic Inflammation at the Journal of Inflammation Research. His research focuses on sepsis, systemic inflammation, immune dysregulation, organ injury, endothelial dysfunction, and translational critical care. He integrates clinical cohorts, biomarkers, single-cell and bulk transcriptomics, bioinformatics, machine learning, and translational studies to investigate sepsis endotypes and precision immunomodulation. He has published first-author and corresponding-author studies in journals including MedComm and Frontiers in Immunology and serves as a peer reviewer for international journals.

Dr. Han Gao is an Associate Research Professor in the Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine at Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, China. Her research focuses on inflammatory lung injury, macrophage efferocytosis, protein palmitoylation, and immune dysregulation, with particular interest in mechanisms linking innate immune-cell states to pulmonary organ injury. She is Principal Investigator of a National Natural Science Foundation of China Youth Science Fund project on ZDHHC18-mediated DAGLβ palmitoylation, macrophage efferocytosis, and acute lung injury, and has published first- and corresponding-author studies in pulmonary fibrosis, sepsis-related immune regulation, and transcriptomic/computational research.