Introduction: the immune response against dying cells

The innate immune system is charged with the daunting task to discriminate harmless cell death events, as they occur in normal tissue homeostasis, and potentially harmful cell deaths, as they are elicited by infectious microorganisms or as a byproduct of malignant transformation. The distinction between harmful and harmless cell death relies on subtle biochemical differences that precede or accompany cell death and that act on a series of receptors, including pattern recognition receptors that are present on cells of the innate immune system, particularly dendritic cells. The present series of articles provides an up-to-date compendium on the molecular crosstalk between cell death and immune cells.