Elsevier

Cellular Immunology

Volume 144, Issue 1, 1 October 1992, Pages 237-245
Cellular Immunology

Short communication
Treatment of fetal thymic organ culture with IL-1 leads to accelerated differentiation of subsets of CD4CD8 cells

https://doi.org/10.1016/0008-8749(92)90240-PGet rights and content

Abstract

Using fetal thymic organ culture (FTOC), we describe the effects of IL-1 on T cell differentiation, particularly within the CD4CD8 subset. While treatment of FTOC with IL-1 led to a modest reduction in total thymocyte yield, it induced an increase in the percentage of CD4CD8 cells that express IL-2R early in culture and a decrease in the number of their precursors (CD44+IL-2R cells). The increase in the percentage of cells expressing IL-2R was not accompanied by an increase in the number of these cells. At later time points these IL-2R+ cells (and their precursors) were reduced relative to controls. The total number of CD4CD8CD3 precursor cells in IL-1-treated cultures was reduced to approximately half that in controls at Day 12 of culture. However, only minor inhibition of total cell number was observed, which, taken together with the greater frequency of IL-2R+ precursors, suggests that this depletion of the pool of precursors may have been due to the induction of premature differentiation rather than to its inhibition.

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    Current address: Howard Hughes Medical Institute, National Jewish Centre for Immunology and Respiratory Medicine, 5th Floor, 1400 Jackson Street, Denver, CO 80206.

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