139 Pathogenic CD8+ T cell infiltration and immune synapse formation in alopecia areata hair follicles

Abstract

Alopecia Areata (AA) involves CD8+ NKG2D+ T cell-mediated hair follicle (HF) damage that causes hair loss. Despite the identification of CD8+ T cells as primary pathogenic cells involved in AA, the molecular mechanisms used by these cells to kill their target cells within HF are not known. CD8+ T cells form immune synapses (IS) to contact, recognize and destroy their target cells, therefore we postulated that CD8+ T cells employ a cytolytic IS for target cell killing in AA. Here, we aimed to directly visualize the interactions of CD8+ T cells with HF target cells in a C3H/HeJ mouse model of AA using high-resolution confocal microscopy.