By Sun May 16 2021 Scientists have discovered that ‘elite controllers’ have myeloid dendritic cells that display characteristics of trained innate immune cells. Immunity often calls to mind the adaptive immune response, made up of antibodies and T cells that learn to fight specific pathogens after infection or vaccination. But the immune system also has an innate immune response, which uses a set number of techniques to provide a swift, non-specialized response against pathogens or support the adaptive immune response. In the past few years, however, scientists have found that certain parts of the innate immune response can, in some instances, also be trained in response to infectious pathogens, such as HIV. Xu Yu, MD, a Core Member of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard, and colleagues recently published a study in the Journal of Clinical Investigation which showed that elite controllers, a rare subset of people whose immune system can control HIV without the use of drugs, have myeloid dendritic cells, part of the innate immune response, that display traits of a trained innate immune cell.