Innate control of tissue-reparative human regulatory T cells

AJ Lam, KN MacDonald, AM Pesenacker… - The Journal of …, 2019 - journals.aai.org
AJ Lam, KN MacDonald, AM Pesenacker, SC Juvet, KA Morishita, B Bressler, JG Pan
The Journal of Immunology, 2019journals.aai.org
Regulatory T cell (Treg) therapy is a potential curative approach for a variety of immune-
mediated conditions, including autoimmunity and transplantation, in which there is
pathological tissue damage. In mice, IL-33R (ST2)–expressing Tregs mediate tissue repair
by producing the growth factor amphiregulin, but whether similar tissue-reparative Tregs
exist in humans remains unclear. We show that human Tregs in blood and multiple tissue
types produced amphiregulin, but this was neither a unique feature of Tregs nor selectively …
Abstract
Regulatory T cell (Treg) therapy is a potential curative approach for a variety of immune-mediated conditions, including autoimmunity and transplantation, in which there is pathological tissue damage. In mice, IL-33R (ST2)–expressing Tregs mediate tissue repair by producing the growth factor amphiregulin, but whether similar tissue-reparative Tregs exist in humans remains unclear. We show that human Tregs in blood and multiple tissue types produced amphiregulin, but this was neither a unique feature of Tregs nor selectively upregulated in tissues. Human Tregs in blood, tonsil, synovial fluid, colon, and lung tissues did not express ST2, so ST2+ Tregs were engineered via lentiviral-mediated overexpression, and their therapeutic potential for cell therapy was examined. Engineered ST2+ Tregs exhibited TCR-independent, IL-33–stimulated amphiregulin expression and a heightened ability to induce M2-like macrophages. The finding that amphiregulin-producing Tregs have a noneffector phenotype and are progressively lost upon TCR-induced proliferation and differentiation suggests that the tissue repair capacity of human Tregs may be an innate function that operates independently from their classical suppressive function.
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