A Cytokine-Independent Approach To Identify Antigen-Specific Human Germinal Center T Follicular Helper Cells and Rare Antigen-Specific CD4+ T Cells in Blood.

ABSTRACT: Detection of Ag-specific CD4(+) T cells is central to the study of many human infectious diseases, vaccines, and autoimmune diseases. However, such cells are generally rare and heterogeneous in their cytokine profiles. Identification of Ag-specific germinal center (GC) T follicular helper (Tfh) cells by cytokine production has been particularly problematic. The function of a GC Tfh cell is to selectively help adjacent GC B cells via cognate interaction; thus, GC Tfh cells may be stingy cytokine producers, fundamentally different from Th1 or Th17 cells in the quantities of cytokines produced. Conventional identification of Ag-specific cells by intracellular cytokine staining relies on the ability of the CD4(+) T cell to generate substantial amounts of cytokine. To address this problem, we h

SUBMITTER: Dan JM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4955771 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature