| First Author | Baumann NS | Year | 2019 |
| Journal | PLoS Pathog | Volume | 15 |
| Issue | 5 | Pages | e1007785 |
| PubMed ID | 31083700 | Mgi Jnum | J:323744 |
| Mgi Id | MGI:7264506 | Doi | 10.1371/journal.ppat.1007785 |
| Citation | Baumann NS, et al. (2019) Early primed KLRG1- CMV-specific T cells determine the size of the inflationary T cell pool. PLoS Pathog 15(5):e1007785 |
| abstractText | Memory T cell inflation is a process in which a subset of cytomegalovirus (CMV) specific CD8 T cells continuously expands mainly during latent infection and establishes a large and stable population of effector memory cells in peripheral tissues. Here we set out to identify in vivo parameters that promote and limit CD8 T cell inflation in the context of MCMV infection. We found that the inflationary T cell pool comprised mainly high avidity CD8 T cells, outcompeting lower avidity CD8 T cells. Furthermore, the size of the inflationary T cell pool was not restricted by the availability of specific tissue niches, but it was directly related to the number of virus-specific CD8 T cells that were activated during priming. In particular, the amount of early-primed KLRG1- cells and the number of inflationary cells with a central memory phenotype were a critical determinant for the overall magnitude of the inflationary T cell pool. Inflationary memory CD8 T cells provided protection from a Vaccinia virus challenge and this protection directly correlated with the size of the inflationary memory T cell pool in peripheral tissues. These results highlight the remarkable protective potential of inflationary CD8 T cells that can be harnessed for CMV-based T cell vaccine approaches. |
