A minority of Th1 and Tfh effector cells express survival genes shared by memory cell progeny that require IL-7 or TCR signaling to persist

Kevin C Osum; Samuel H Becker; Peter D Krueger; Jason S Mitchell; Sung-Wook Hong; Ian R Magill; Marc K Jenkins

doi:10.1016/j.celrep.2024.115111

A minority of Th1 and Tfh effector cells express survival genes shared by memory cell progeny that require IL-7 or TCR signaling to persist

Cell Rep. 2024 Dec 25;44(1):115111. doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2024.115111. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Kevin C Osum¹, Samuel H Becker¹, Peter D Krueger¹, Jason S Mitchell¹, Sung-Wook Hong², Ian R Magill³, Marc K Jenkins⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Center for Immunology, University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA.
² Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Center for Immunology, University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA; Department of Biotechnology, Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea.
³ Department of Immunology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
⁴ Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Center for Immunology, University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA. Electronic address: jenki002@umn.edu.

PMID: 39723889
DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2024.115111

Abstract

It is not clear how CD4⁺ memory T cells are formed from a much larger pool of earlier effector cells. We found that transient systemic bacterial infection rapidly generates several antigen-specific T helper (Th)1 and T follicular helper (Tfh) cell populations with different tissue residence behaviors. Although most cells of all varieties had transcriptomes indicative of cell stress and death at the peak of the response, some had already acquired a memory cell signature characterized by expression of genes involved in cell survival. Each Th1 and Tfh cell type was maintained long term by interleukin (IL)-7, except germinal center Tfh cells, which depended on a T cell antigen receptor (TCR) signal. The results indicate that acute infection induces rapid differentiation of Th1 and Tfh cells, a minority of which quickly adopt the gene expression profile of memory cells and survive by signals from the IL-7 receptor or TCR.

Keywords: CD4+ T cell; CP: Immunology; Tfh; Th1; immune memory.