Role reversal

Bird, Lucy

doi:10.1038/nri3864

Research Highlight
Published: 22 May 2015

T cells

Role reversal

Lucy Bird

Nature Reviews Immunology volume 15, page 333 (2015)Cite this article

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The authors used reporter mice to track the fate of T_H17 cells in vivo: T cells that have expressed high levels of interleukin-17A (IL-17A) were permanently marked with yellow fluorescent protein and any subsequent expression of the regulatory T cell markers IL-10 and forkhead box P3 (FOXP3) was also tagged and could be measured directly ex vivo. In the steady state, approximately half of all mouse intestinal CD4⁺ T cells that had expressed IL-17A no longer expressed this cytokine — the authors referred to these cells as ex-T_H17 cells. Some intestinal ex-T_H17 cells expressed IL-10 and some expressed FOXP3. Following a self-limiting inflammatory response induced by injection of CD3-specific monoclonal antibody, an expansion of the intestinal T_H17 cell population was followed by an increase in the number of ex-T_H17 cells expressing high levels of IL-10, with a few of these cells co-expressing IL-10 and FOXP3. The IL-10⁺ ex-T_H17 cells more closely resembled T_R1 cells than T_H17 cells (that is, they were LAG3⁺CCR6⁻RORγt^low).

ex-T_H17 T_R1 cells were able to prevent T_H17 cell-mediated colitis

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References

Gagliani, N. et al. TH17 cells transdifferentiate into regulatory T cells during resolution of inflammation. Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature14452 (2015)

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