Inflammation is part of a complex biological response to injury as a result of different stimuli such as pathogens, damaged cells, or irritants.

Local signals at the sites of inflammation mediate rapid cells mobilization and recruitment and dictate differentiation programs whereby these cells drive clearance of “inflammatory inducers” and promote resolution and restoration of tissue homeostasis. However, persistent inflammatory stimuli or dysregulation of mechanisms of the resolution phase can lead to chronic inflammation.

This phenomenon, from a “temporal point of view,” distinguishes a first cellular subset that responds to proinflammatory stimuli, commonly referred to as innate immunity (PMN leukocytes), later followed by cellular components, classically catalogued as adaptive immunity.

From this point of view, inflammation is a stereotyped response, and therefore, it is considered as a mechanism of innate immunity, as compared to adaptive immunity, which is specific for each pathogen.

Intriguingly, it is now emerging the hypothesis that components of adaptive immunity play a crucial role in both the acute and chronic phases of the inflammatory process. This “novel view” supports even more the evidence that lymphocytes cooperate with innate immunity cells and together orchestrate the whole inflammatory response.

We invite investigators to submit original research and review articles that will stimulate the continuing efforts to understand the interaction between the adaptive immunity and the inflammatory process in humans and also in animal models. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Elucidation of the role/mechanism in lymphocytes involvement during acute and/or chronic inflammation
• Identification of new T cell subsets as functional regulators of immune and nonimmune cells
• New insights in modulation of inflammation by immune cells
• Development of novel anti-inflammatory molecules and immunotherapeutic strategies to treat inflammation
• New cellular and animal models to test and understand the inflammatory process

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal’s Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/iji/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/submit/journals/iji/aii/ according to the following timetable: