Crosstalk Between T Cells, Dendritic Cells, Cytokines, and Chemokines

Abstract

T cells that came into contact with mature and immature dendritic cells had an overall reduction in gene expression in IL10, IL12, IL23, ICOS, TGFB, TNFA, PD1, TBET, GATA3, FASL, PERF, FOXP3, and CTLA4. T cells stimulated with immature dendritic cells had the most consistent results in decreasing gene expression in all the genes tested. T cells in contact with mature dendritic cells had mostly a decrease in gene expression, but in IFNG and Granzyme there was an increase in gene expression. However, when adding additional stimuli such as interferon(IFN) or hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) gene expression increased in all of the markers except for TGFB, PERF, and IL12. This leads me to believe that crosstalk is occurring between dendritic cells and T cells. This crosstalk could direct the particular cells to perform specialized functions, which can explain the increase and decrease of the markers tested. In addition, interferon and hydroxychloroquine seems to hyper-stimulate most markers to create an up regulation of gene expression.