Tcf1+ cells are required to maintain the inflationary T cell pool upon MCMV infection

Suzanne P. M. Welten, Alexander Yermanos, Nicolas S. Baumann, Franziska Wagen, Nathalie Oetiker, Ioana Sandu, Alessandro Pedrioli, Jennifer D. Oduro, Sai T. Reddy, Luka Cicin-Sain, Werner Held and Annette Oxenius ()
Additional contact information
Suzanne P. M. Welten: Institute of Microbiology, ETH Zürich
Alexander Yermanos: Institute of Microbiology, ETH Zürich
Nicolas S. Baumann: Institute of Microbiology, ETH Zürich
Franziska Wagen: Institute of Microbiology, ETH Zürich
Nathalie Oetiker: Institute of Microbiology, ETH Zürich
Ioana Sandu: Institute of Microbiology, ETH Zürich
Alessandro Pedrioli: Institute of Microbiology, ETH Zürich
Jennifer D. Oduro: Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research, Hannover-Braunschweig Site
Sai T. Reddy: ETH Zürich
Luka Cicin-Sain: Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research, Hannover-Braunschweig Site
Werner Held: University of Lausanne
Annette Oxenius: Institute of Microbiology, ETH Zürich

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-14

Abstract: Abstract Cytomegalovirus-based vaccine vectors offer interesting opportunities for T cell-based vaccination purposes as CMV infection induces large numbers of functional effector-like cells that accumulate in peripheral tissues, a process termed memory inflation. Maintenance of high numbers of peripheral CD8 T cells requires continuous replenishment of the inflationary T cell pool. Here, we show that the inflationary T cell population contains a small subset of cells expressing the transcription factor Tcf1. These Tcf1+ cells resemble central memory T cells and are proliferation competent. Upon sensing viral reactivation events, Tcf1+ cells feed into the pool of peripheral Tcf1− cells and depletion of Tcf1+ cells hampers memory inflation. TCR repertoires of Tcf1+ and Tcf1− populations largely overlap, with the Tcf1+ population showing higher clonal diversity. These data show that Tcf1+ cells are necessary for sustaining the inflationary T cell response, and upholding this subset is likely critical for the success of CMV-based vaccination approaches.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16219-3 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-16219-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-16219-3

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().