Understanding T cell proliferation to a T

Main Category: Immune System / Vaccines
Article Date: 22 Nov 2005 - 0:00 PDT

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Homeostatic, or spontaneous, proliferation of T cells occurs in many physiological and pathological conditions, including aging and chronic infections. In a paper appearing online on November 17 in advance of print publication of the December issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Juan Lafaille and colleagues from New York University answer the important scientific question: What is the role of regulatory T cells (Treg) in the control of spontaneous T cell proliferation?

The authors use a variety of experimental approaches to show that regulatory T cells do, in fact, control homeostatic proliferation. They show that the intensity of the Treg effect is dependent on the avidity of proliferating T cells for self-ligands. T cells displaying low avidity are almost completely prevented from dividing by Treg; T cells displaying higher avidity divide even in the presence of Treg, but accumulate at lower numbers if Treg are present. This data may explain the discrepancies that currently exist in the literature. Finally, in the presence of Tregs, there is more programmed cell death of target cells.

TITLE: Control of Homeostatic Proliferation by Regulatory T cells

View the PDF of this article at: the-jci.org/article.php?id=25463

Stacie Bloom
press_releases@the-jci.org
Journal of Clinical Investigation
jci.org
December 2005

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