Chih-Chao Chang, George Vlad, Vivette D D'Agati, Zhuoru Liu, Qing-yin Zhang, Piotr Witkowski, Ali A Torkamani, Michael B Stokes, Eric K Ho, Raffaello Cortesini, Nicole Suciu-Foca
Ig-like transcript 3 (ILT3) is an inhibitory receptor expressed by tolerogenic dendritic cells. When human CD8(+) T cells are allostimulated in the presence of recombinant ILT3-Fc protein, they differentiate into antigenic specific T suppressor (Ts) cells that inhibit CD4 and CD8 T cell effector function both in vitro and in vivo. ILT3-Fc-induced CD8(+) Ts cells express high amounts of BCL6 that are crucial to their function. Knockdown of BCL6 from unprimed human T cells prevents their differentiation into Ts cells, whereas ex vivo overexpression of BCL6 converts CD8(+) T cells into Ts cells...
November 15, 2010: Journal of Immunology