The Danger Theory: Twenty Years Later

Abstract

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The self-nonself theory has dominated immunology since the 1950s. In the 1990s, Matzinger and her colleagues suggested a new, competing theory, called the danger theory. This theory has provoked mixed acclaim: enthusiasm and criticism. Here we assess the danger theory vis-à-vis recent experimental data on innate immunity, transplantation, cancers and tolerance to foreign entities, and try to elucidate more clearly whether danger is well defined.

Keywords

• Immunity
• Inflammation
• Transplantation
• Cancer
• tolerance
• innate immunity