Tuesday, July 19, 2022, from 2:00 PM ET to 3:00 PM ET • Hosted by AST's Community of Transplant Scientists (COTS)
"NFAT-dependent and -independent exhaustion circuits program maternal CD8 T cell hypofunction in pregnancy"
(J Exp Med. 2022 Jan 3;219(1):e20201599. doi: 10.1084/jem.20201599. Epub 2021 Dec 9.)
In this article:
Pregnancy is a common immunization event, but the molecular mechanisms and immunological consequences provoked by pregnancy remain largely unknown. We used mouse models and human transplant registry data to reveal that pregnancy induced exhausted CD8 T cells (Preg-TEX), which associated with prolonged allograft survival. Maternal CD8 T cells shared features of exhaustion with CD8 T cells from cancer and chronic infection, including transcriptional down-regulation of ribosomal proteins and up-regulation of TOX and inhibitory receptors... Altogether, [the] data reveal the molecular mechanisms and clinical consequences of maternal CD8 T cell hypofunction and identify pregnancy as a previously unappreciated context in which T cell exhaustion may occur.
Speaker:
- Paige Porrett, MD, PhD • University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL
Moderators:
- Amandeep Bajwa, PhD • University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, TN
- Andrew Wells, PhD • University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA