TIGIT expression on CD8+ T cells correlates with higher cytotoxic capacity

Author:

Blazkova, Jana

Huiting, Erin D

Boddapati, Arun Kumar

Shi, Victoria

Whitehead, Emily J

Justement, Jesse S

Nordstrom, Jeffrey

Moir, Susan

Lack, Justin

Chun, Tae-Wook
Author Address

Laboratory of Immunoregulation, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bethesda, MD, USA., NIAID Collaborative Bioinformatics Resource (NCBR), NIAID, NIH, Bethesda, MD, USA., Advanced Biomedical Computational Science, Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research, Frederick, MD, USA., MacroGenics, Inc., Rockville, MD, USA.,

Abstract:

Persistent exposure to antigen leads to T cell exhaustion and immunologic dysfunction. We examined the immune exhaustion markers TIGIT and PD-1 in HIV-infected and healthy individuals and the relationship with cytotoxic CD8 + T lymphocyte (CTL) activity. Frequencies of TIGIT but not PD-1 positively correlated with CTL activity in HIV-aviremic and healthy individuals; however, there was no correlation in HIV-viremic individuals. Transcriptome analyses revealed upregulation of genes associated with antiviral immunity in TIGIT + versus TIGIT -CD8 + T cells. Our data suggest that TIGIT +CD8 + T cells do not necessarily represent a state of immune exhaustion and maintain an intrinsic cytotoxicity in HIV-infected individuals. Published by Oxford University Press for the Infectious Diseases Society of America 2021. This work is written by (a) US Government employee(s) and is in the public domain in the US.

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