The in vitro expanded CD8+ T cells and its controls

CD8+ NKT cells are naturally occurring but rare T cells that express both T cell and natural killer (NK) cell markers. These cells may play key roles in establishing tolerance to self antigens; however, the mechanism of action and the molecular profiles of these cells are poorly characterized due to their extremely low frequencies. We developed a highly efficient in vitro conversion/expansion protocol for such cells and extensively characterized their functional and molecular phenotypes using a variety of genomic and immunological techniques. We used microarrays to elucidate the molecular mechanisms underlying the suppression function of the converted CD8+ NKT cells. Keywords: Cell type comparison To identify candidate genes that might be related to the suppressive activity, the CD8+ NKT cells with potent suppressive activity were compared to three different control cells: 1) CD4+ T cells (with very weak suppression) cultured under the same condition as a control for culture condition, 2) naïve CD8 T cells as the baseline expression level, and 3) CD8+ T cells activated using conventional activation protocols. The last two cell populations do not possess suppressive activity. This data set allows us to examine a number of different questions