University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2013 Impact of IL-27 on regulatory T cell responses Aisling Catherine O'Hara University of Pennsylvania,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Allergy and Immunology Commons, Immunology and Infectious Disease Commons, and the Medical Immunology Commons Recommended Citation O'Hara, Aisling Catherine, "Impact of IL-27 on regulatory T cell responses" (2013). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 906. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/906 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/906 For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Impact of IL-27 on regulatory T cell responses Abstract Interleukin (IL)–27 is a heterodimeric cytokine with potent inhibitory properties. Thus, mice that lack IL–27–mediated signaling develop exaggerated inflammatory responses during toxoplasmosis as well as other infections or autoimmune processes. While regulatory T (Treg) cells are critical to limit inflammation, their oler during toxoplasmosis is controversial because this infection results in a dramatic decrease in the total numbers of these cells associated with reduced levels of IL–2. Because IL–27 suppresses IL–2, we initially hypothesized that it was responsible for the Treg cell “crash”. Thus, we examined the role of IL–27 and IL–2 and their effects on Treg cells during toxoplasmosis. We observed that although IL–2 production is enhanced in the absence of IL–27, this was not sufficiento t rescue Treg cell frequencies during infection. Rather, our data indicated that IL–27 promoted an immunosuppressive Treg cell population that displayed a T helper 1 (TH1) phenotype, characterized by the expression of T–bet, CXCR3, IL–10 and interferon (IFN)–γ.