Drugs and immunomodulatory mechanisms: understanding pathways and targeting diseases

Immunomodulation has become a central concept in understanding how drugs influence human health across diverse disease conditions. Many commonly used and newly developed therapeutic agents exert significant effects on the immune system by enhancing or suppressing immune activity. These immune-mediated actions play important roles in neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative disorders, metabolic diseases, infectious diseases, cardiovascular conditions, traumatic brain injury, cancer, and substance use disorders. Growing evidence shows that drugs can shape immune cell phenotypes, regulate cytokine secretion, alter macrophage polarization, and modulate T cell responses. Understanding these mechanisms is essential for improving therapeutic outcomes while minimizing immunotoxicity. This emerging field provides an opportunity to explore how drug-induced immune modulation can be harnessed for precision medicine.The goal of this Research Topic is to investigate how drugs affect immune pathways and how these interactions can be leveraged to enhance disease management. This includes defining the specific signaling pathways that drugs activate or suppress, understanding how they alter immune cell populations, and identifying the resulting functional consequences in various disease models. Drugs may shift macrophages from a resting to an inflammatory or anti-inflammatory phenotype, promote the differentiation of CD4 or CD8 T cells, or regulate antigen presentation pathways. The Topic will also examine drugs that show promising immunomodulatory properties in neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease, metabolic and cardiovascular disorders, cancers, traumatic brain injury, infectious diseases, and substance addiction. Another aim is to highlight recent advances, including formulation strategies that enhance drug-mediated immune effects, new therapeutic targets, and approaches to reduce adverse immune reactions or immunotoxicity. By compiling these insights, the Topic will provide a comprehensive understanding of how drugs can be optimized to modulate the immune system for therapeutic benefit.This Research Topic invites submissions focused on the immunomodulatory actions of drugs across a wide range of diseases. Authors are encouraged to address themes such as:• Drugs that activate or suppress immune pathways involved in neurological, metabolic, cardiovascular, infectious, cancer, and addiction-related conditions• Mechanistic insights into macrophage polarization, T cell differentiation, and antigen presentation altered by drug exposure• Drug-induced changes in neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative processes, including Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease• Formulation and delivery strategies that enhance immunomodulatory activity or reduce immunotoxicity• Synthesis and immune target validations and their anticancer potential • Identification of new therapeutic targets based on immune-mediated drug effectsWe welcome research articles, reviews, case reports, clinical studies, short communications, and brief reports. Topic editors: Jonaid Ahmad Malik, Mohd Rihan, Nazeer Hasan Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/76542/drugs-and-immunomodulatory-mechanisms-understanding-pathways-and-targeting-diseases