Title

Immunosenescence: Decoding Immune Aging for Targeted Therapy

Description

Immunosenescence is the age-related decline and remodeling of the immune system, profoundly influencing susceptibility to infections, cancer, autoimmunity, and responses to vaccination and immunotherapy. Rather than simple deterioration, it involves complex dynamic alterations across innate and adaptive immunity, including changes in immune cell composition, functional exhaustion, chronic low-grade inflammation, metabolic dysregulation, and tissue-specific microenvironmental remodeling. Recent advances in high-dimensional technologies—such as single-cell transcriptomics, epigenomics, proteomics, and spatial multi-omics—have enabled unprecedented resolution of the cellular and molecular landscapes of aging immunity, revealing previously unrecognized immune cell states, lineage trajectories, and regulatory networks that drive age-associated dysfunction. At the same time, emerging therapeutic strategies—including immune rejuvenation, metabolic reprogramming, cytokine engineering, microbiome modulation, next-generation vaccine design, and precision immunotherapy—are opening promising avenues to restore immune competence and improve clinical outcomes in aged populations.

This special issue seeks to provide a comprehensive and multidisciplinary forum for advancing our understanding of immunosenescence, spanning fundamental mechanisms to clinical translation. As the global population ages, unraveling the complex alterations of the aging immune system has become an urgent priority in biomedical research. We cordially invite original research articles, reviews, and perspectives that explore the many facets of immune aging, with a special focus on mechanistic insights, multi-omics dissection, disease connections, therapeutic strategies, and emerging technologies.

Topics

Fundamental Mechanisms of Immunosenescence

• Age-associated alterations in innate and adaptive immune cell compartments

• T cell exhaustion, clonal expansion, and repertoire remodeling

• Inflammaging and chronic immune activation

· Cellular senescence and immune system interactions

• Metabolic and mitochondrial regulations of immune aging

AI and Multi-Omics Dissection of Immune Aging

· Single-cell and spatial transcriptomics of aging immune systems

· Epigenomic and chromatin accessibility changes in immune aging

· Proteomics and metabolomics profiling of immunosenescence

· Integration of multi-omics data for immune cell state and trajectory inference

· AI-driven modeling and prediction of immune aging dynamics

· Biomarker discovery for immunological age and functional decline

Immunosenescence in Disease Contexts

· Immunosenescence and cancer development, progression, and immunotherapy response

· Neuroimmune interactions and neurodegenerative diseases

· Tissue-specific immunosenescence and organ microenvironment remodeling

Rejuvenation Strategies and Clinical Translation

· Immune rejuvenation and reversal of immunosenescence

· Cell-based therapies and engineered immune cells in aging

Emerging Technologies and Experimental Models

· Organoids and humanized models for studying T cell aging

· Longitudinal cohort studies and aging atlases

Content types

Research articles, review articles, letters, commentaries and perspectives

Deadline

November 30, 2026

Guest editors

Mingzhao Zhu

Professor

Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Research area: T cell immunity in vaccination, infection, and tumor models; lymphoid microenvironment and epigenetic regulation; development of innovative vaccines and immune intervention strategies

Email: zhumz@im.ac.cn

Longchao Liu

Professor

Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Research area: T cell-targeting immunotherapy, therapeutic antibody engineering, multi-omics driven tumor microenvironment decoding

Email: liulongchao@im.ac.cn

Submission guidelines

Please submit your paper through our online submission system. All papers will be peer-reviewed. The submission deadline is November 30, 2026. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together. Research articles, review articles, letters, commentaries and perspectives are invited.

hLife adopts format-free submission. Format-free submission means that, provided you include everything necessary for review and using a consistent citation format, you can submit your paper without needing to worry about formatting your manuscript to meet hLife’s requirements.

Please state in the cover letter that your submission is for the special section of “Immunosenescence: Decoding Immune Aging for Targeted Therapy”. Article Publishing Charges (APCs) for received papers of hLife will be waived by December 2026.

Submission website

https://www.editorialmanager.com/hlife