Do regulatory T cells reduce the risk of autoimmune pathology induced by CD8+ T cell?

Chadimová, Tereza

5 Regulatory T cells (Tregs) are essential for the maintenance of peripheral self-tolerance and prevention of autoimmunity by suppressing the response of self-reactive CD8+ and CD4+ T cells. However, while interactions of Tregs with CD4+ T cells have been extensively studied, their effect on the self-tolerance of CD8+ T cells has not been explored in detail. The main aim of this diploma project was to provide evidence whether and how Tregs prevent autoimmunity induced by CD8+ T cells. We used an experimental mouse model of autoimmune diabetes allowing us to acutely deplete Tregs and titrate the number of self-reactive T cells, self- antigen affinity, and self-antigen doses. We found out that Tregs play an important role in the prevention of CD8+ T-cell mediated autoimmunity. Moreover, we revealed that Tregs suppress both high-affinity T cells that escape negative selection and relatively weakly self-reactive, but numerous, positively selected T cells. Tregs do so by increasing requirement for the number of self-reactive CD8+ T cells required for the autoimmunity induction. Intriguingly, presence of Tregs does not impact threshold for self-antigen. Moreover, for the first time, we showed that Tregs can suppress CD8+ T-cell-mediated autoimmunity in the absence of conventional CD4+ T cells. This means that...

guest :: login Digital Repository
		Search		Submit		Help		About