Nature Immunology4, 1191 - 1198 (2003)
Published online: 16 November 2003; | doi:10.1038/ni1009
Selective expression of the interleukin 7 receptor identifies effector CD8 T cells that give rise to long-lived memory cells
Susan M Kaech1, Joyce T Tan2, E John Wherry1, Bogumila T Konieczny1, Charles D Surh2
& Rafi Ahmed1
1
Emory Vaccine Center and Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Emory University School of Medicine, 1510 Clifton Road, Atlanta, Georgia 30322, USA.
2
Department of Immunology, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California 92037, USA.
A major unanswered question is what distinguishes the majority of activated CD8 T cells that die after an acute viral infection from the small fraction (5−10%) that survive to become long-lived memory cells. In this study we show that increased expression of the interleukin 7 receptor -chain (IL-7R) identifies the effector CD8 T cells that will differentiate into memory cells. IL-7Rhi effector cells contained increased amounts of antiapoptotic molecules, and adoptive transfer of IL-7Rhi and IL-7Rlo effector cells showed that IL-7Rhi cells preferentially gave rise to memory cells that could persist and confer protective immunity. Thus, selective expression of IL-7R identifies memory cell precursors, and this marker may be useful in predicting the number of memory T cells generated after infection or immunization.
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