Comparative analysis of skin- and gut-homing CD8+ T cells in aHSCT patients developing acute graft versus host disease (aGvHD). Homo sapiens

Patients diagnosed with cutaneous and/or gastrointestinal aGvHD provide a unique opportunity to perform an in-depth comparison of activated human CD8+ T cells homing to the gut and skin, in some cases even within the same host, at the same time, acting as key players in the same human disease, and exerting their effector functions in these two tissue environments. This study aims at the identification of novel biomarkers associated with skin- and gut-homing CD8+ T cells in general, and CD8+ T cell markers possibly linked to CTL-mediated skin- and gut damage in aGvHD in particular. Overall design: Skin- and gut-homing CD8+ T cell subsets were isolated from aHSCT patients developing cutaneous aGvHD, gastrointestinal aGvHD, both cutaneous and GI aGvHD simultaneously, or none (reference). To this end, patients’ PBMCs were sorted into CD8b+/CLA+ (skin-homing CTL), CD8b+/ITGB7+ (gut-homing CTL), and CD8b+/CLA-/ITGB7- subsets (reference) by three-way FACS sorting. Cell purity was >98% in all cases. Next, skin-homing, gut homing and reference CD8+ T cells were analyzed by comparative gene expression profiling.