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T cell regulation: a special job or everyone's responsibility?

Nature Immunology volume 2, pages 757–758 (2001)Cite this article

Despite the burial of the archetypal suppressor T cell concept prevalent in the 1970s and 1980s1, the theory of active immune down-regulation as the mechanism by which peripheral tolerance is maintained has strong support2. The appeal of immune regulation may be that, in contrast to central tolerance induction by deletion of T cells in the thymus, immune regulation offers the chance for therapeutic intervention. Given the importance of maintaining tolerance to self, redundancy in the underlying mechanisms should be expected, although recently a functionally specialized subpopulation of regulatory CD4+ T cells (TR cells), whose existence has been proposed on the basis of a variety of experimental systems, has gained in prominence3.

Although it may be tempting to propose that a unique subpopulation of T cells is responsible for all of peripheral tolerance, it is dangerous to extrapolate from the highly divergent experimental systems used3. Most of the characteristics and proposed mode of action of TR cells were defined in experimental systems that depended on a state of lymphopenia to observe autoimmunity in the first place. We now put forward an alternative view of T cell regulation based on the importance of homeostatic control mechanisms that operate in a normal immune system in vivo; this view refers specifically to experimental systems that use lymphopenic mice.

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  1. Division of Molecular Immunology, The National Institute for Medical Research Mill Hill, London, UK, NW7 1AA

    Brigitta Stockinger, Thomas Barthlott & George Kassiotis

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  1. Brigitta Stockinger
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Stockinger, B., Barthlott, T. & Kassiotis, G. T cell regulation: a special job or everyone's responsibility?. Nat Immunol 2, 757–758 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/ni0901-757

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