Abstract
T cell immune surveillance is considered an important host protection process for inhibiting carcinogenesis. The full capacity of T cell immune surveillance is dependent on T cell homeostasis, particularly for central memory T (TCM) cells and stem cell memory T (TSCM) cells. In this study, distribution of T cell subsets in peripheral blood from 12 patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) and 12 cases with CML in complete remission (CR) was analyzed using a multicolor flow cytometer, and 16 samples from healthy individuals (HIs) served as control. The proportion of CD8+ TSCM and CD4+ and CD8+ TCM cells were lower, while CD4+ effector memory T (TEM) cells and CD4+ and CD8+ terminal effector T (TEF) cells were higher in CML patients compared with HIs. Moreover, the proportion of CD8+CD28- T cells, which were found to have the immune suppressive function, increased in the naive T (TN) cell and TCM subsets in CML patients compared with HIs. Our study reveals that elimination of leukemia cells by treating with tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) restores the memory T cell distribution from a skewed pattern in CML patients who are under leukemia burden, indicating that leukemia-specific immune responses mediated by T cells might be induced and maintained in CML patients, however, these responsive T cells might gradually become exhausted due to the continued existence of leukemia cells and their environment; therefore, T cell activation using a different approach remains a key point for enhancing global T cell immunity in CML patients, even for those with CR status.
Highlights
Anti-leukemia immunity plays an important role in protecting against the development of leukemia cells
We first compared the CD3+ stem cell memory T (TSCM), central memory T cell (TCM), TEM, and terminal effector T (TEF) subsets distribution in the three groups, and the results demonstrated that there was no difference between the groups for TSCM and TEM cells, while there was a distinct decreased proportion in the TCM subset in the chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) group (20.0%, p = 0.000); there was no significant difference in the CML-complete remission (CR) group (32.8%, p = 0.163) compared with healthy individuals (HIs) (42.1%) (Figure 1C)
With the development of multicolor flow cytometry and high throughput sequencing, human memory T cells could be further classified into four subsets, and TSCM and TCM cells have the most potential for adoptive therapy because they can rapidly differentiate into the TEM and TEF subsets after antigen restimulation to control the invasion and spread of pathogens [25]
Summary
Anti-leukemia immunity plays an important role in protecting against the development of leukemia cells.
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