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Poly-functional T helper cells in human tonsillar mononuclear cells Volume 30, numéro 4, December 2019

Illustrations


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Tableaux

Auteurs
1 From the Institute of Immunology, Zhongshan School of Medicine; Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Organ Donation and Transplant Immunology, Sun Yat-sen University, 74 Zhongshan 2nd Road, Guangzhou, 510080, P.R. China
2 From the department of Otolaryngology, Guangzhou Women and Children's Medical Center, Guangzhou, China
3 From the Allergy Center, Otohinolaryngology Hospital, the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China
* Correspondence: Dr. Changyou Wu, M.D., Ph.D. Institute of Immunology, Zhongshan School of Medicine, Sun Yat-sen University, 74 Zhongshan 2nd Road, Guangzhou 510080, P. R. China.

Tonsils are important lymphoid organs in which B cells and T cells complete their maturation and identify cells that are infected by pathogens. However, the functions of T cells in human tonsils remain unclear, especially the characteristics of polyfunctional CD4+ T helper cells. In this study, we used multi-color flow cytometry to analyze the expression or co-expression of effector cytokines in CD4+ T cells from tonsillar tissues. We have demonstrated that tonsillar CD4+ T cell can express various Th effector cytokines after short-term polyclonal stimulation, and that cytokine-producing CD4+ T cells were CD45RO+ T cells. In addition, we analyzed the co-expression of two or more kinds of cytokines at the level of a single cell. The results showed that tonsillar CD4+ T cells exhibited polyfunctionality by co-expressing two to five kinds of cytokines in the same time. These data furnished a basic theory for further understanding the differentiation of polyfunctional Th cells in human tonsils and their functions in resisting invasive microorganisms.