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Continuous T Cell Receptor Signals Maintain a Functional Regulatory T Cell Pool

2014; Cell Press; Volume: 41; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.immuni.2014.10.012

1097-4180

J. Christoph Vahl, Christoph Drees, Klaus Heger, Sylvia Heink, Julius Fischer, Jelena Nedjic, Naganari Ohkura, Hiromasa Morikawa, Hendrik Poeck, Sonja Schallenberg, David Rieß, Marco Y. Hein, Thorsten Buch, Bojan Polić, Anne Schönle, Robert Zeiser, Annette Schmitt‐Graeff, Karsten Kretschmer, Ludger Klein, Thomas Korn, Shimon Sakaguchi, Marc Schmidt‐Supprian,

Immunotherapy and Immune Responses

Regulatory T (Treg) cells maintain immune homeostasis and prevent inflammatory and autoimmune responses. During development, thymocytes bearing a moderately self-reactive T cell receptor (TCR) can be selected to become Treg cells. Several observations suggest that also in the periphery mature Treg cells continuously receive self-reactive TCR signals. However, the importance of this inherent autoreactivity for Treg cell biology remains poorly defined. To address this open question, we genetically ablated the TCR of mature Treg cells in vivo. These experiments revealed that TCR-induced Treg lineage-defining Foxp3 expression and gene hypomethylation were uncoupled from TCR input in mature Treg cells. However, Treg cell homeostasis, cell-type-specific gene expression and suppressive function critically depend on continuous triggering of their TCR.