CD8α-pilr α相互作用维持CD8⁺ T细胞的休眠，这一成果由美国耶鲁大学Lieping Chen研究组经过不懈努力而取得。相关论文发表在2022年5月26日出版的《科学》杂志上。

研究人员发现CD8α对于外周淋巴器官中处于生理休眠状态CD8⁺ T细胞的维持至关重要。CD8α诱导性缺失后，初始和记忆CD8⁺ T细胞自发获得活化表型，随后在没有暴露于特定抗原的情况下死亡。在小鼠和人类中的研究表明PILRα是CD8α的配体，破坏这种相互作用能够破坏CD8⁺ T细胞的休眠。因此，在没有抗原暴露的情况下，可通过CD8α-PILRα相互作用可实现对外周T细胞池稳态的维持。

据悉，T细胞休眠对于微生物和肿瘤来源大量不同抗原库的维持至关重要，但很大程度其潜在的分子机制仍然未知。

附：英文原文

Title: The CD8α–PILRα interaction maintains CD8+ T cell quiescence

Author: Linghua Zheng, Xue Han, Sheng Yao, Yuwen Zhu, John Klement, Shirley Wu, Lan Ji, Gefeng Zhu, Xiaoxiao Cheng, Zuzana Tobiasova, Weiwei Yu, Baozhu Huang, Matthew D. Vesely, Jun Wang, Jianping Zhang, Edward Quinlan, Lieping Chen

Issue&Volume: 2022-05-27

Abstract: T cell quiescence is essential for maintaining a broad repertoire against a large pool of diverse antigens from microbes and tumors, but the underlying molecular mechanisms remain largely unknown. We show here that CD8α is critical for the maintenance of CD8+ T cells in a physiologically quiescent state in peripheral lymphoid organs. Upon inducible deletion of CD8α, both nave and memory CD8+ T cells spontaneously acquired activation phenotypes and subsequently died without exposure to specific antigens. PILRα was identified as a ligand for CD8α in both mice and humans, and disruption of this interaction was able to break CD8+ T cell quiescence. Thus, peripheral T cell pool size is actively maintained by the CD8α–PILRα interaction in the absence of antigen exposure.

DOI: aaz8658

Source: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaz8658