Mycobacterium tuberculosis cell wall glycolipid, lipoarabinomannan, can inhibit CD4(+) T cell activation by downregulating the phosphorylation of key proximal TCR signaling molecules: Lck, CD3ζ, ZAP70, and LAT. Inhibition of proximal TCR signaling can result in T cell anergy, in which T cells are inactivated following an Ag encounter, yet remain viable and hyporesponsive. We tested whether mann...

Induction of tolerance in memory T cells has profound implications in the treatment of autoimmune diseases and transplant rejection. Previously, we reported that the presentation of low densities of agonist peptide/MHC class II complexes induced anergy in memory CD4(+) T cells. In the present study, we address the specific interaction of different types of APCs with memory CD4(+) T cells. A nov...

While the "true" role of T cell anergy in promoting peripheral tolerance continues to be debated, it is clear that studying the various models of anergy have led to important insight in terms of understanding the pathways and molecules responsible for T cell activation and inhibition. This review will examine our current understanding of CD4+ T cell anergy. In particular, it will focus on the s...

Upon infection with an intracellular pathogen, cytotoxic CD8+ T cells develop diverse differentiation states characterized by function, localization, longevity, and the capacity for self-renewal. The program of differentiation is determined, in part, by FOXO1, a transcription factor known to integrate extrinsic input in order to specify survival, DNA repair, self-renewal, and proliferation. At ...

Plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs) are a particular subset of DCs that link innate and adaptive immunity. They are responsible for the substantial production of type 1 interferon (IFN-I) in response to viral RNA or DNA through activation of TLR7 and 9. Furthermore, pDCs present antigens (Ag) and induce naïve T cell differentiation. It has been demonstrated that pDCs can induce immunogenic T ce...

Costimulation (signal 2) has been proposed to inhibit the induction of T cell clonal anergy by either directly antagonizing negative signals arising from TCR engagement (signal 1) or by synergizing with signal 1 to produce IL-2, which in turn leads to proliferation and dilution of negative regulatory factors. To better define the cellular events that lead to the induction of anergy, we used the...

Thymic positive and negative selection of developing T lymphocytes confronts us with a paradox: How can a T-cell antigen receptor (TCR)-major histocompatibility complex (MHC)/peptide interaction in the former process lead to transduction of signals allowing for cell survival and in the latter induce programmed cell death or a hyporesponsive state known as anergy? One of the hypotheses put forwa...

Antigens derived from apoptotic cell debris can drive clonal T-cell deletion or anergy, and antigens chemically coupled ex vivo to apoptotic cell surfaces have been shown correspondingly to induce tolerance on infusion. Reasoning that a large number of erythrocytes become apoptotic (eryptotic) and are cleared each day, we engineered two different antigen constructs to target the antigen to eryt...

Fast dissociation rate of peptide-MHC complexes from TCR has commonly been accepted to cause T cell anergy. In this study, we present evidence that peptides that form transient complexes with HLA-DR1 induce anergy in T cell clones in vitro and specific memory T cells in vivo. We demonstrate that similar to the low densities of long-lived agonist peptide-MHC, short-lived peptide-MHC ligands indu...

In this report the significance of virus-induced non-specific T cell activation was re-evaluated using transgenic mice in which about half of the CD8(+) T cells expressed a TCR specific for amino acids 33-41 of lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus glycoprotein I. This allowed tracing of cells with known specificity and priming history in an environment also containing a normal heterogeneous CD8(+...