bims-imseme Biomed News
on Immunosenescence and T cell metabolism
Issue of 2021–06–20
nine papers selected by
Pierpaolo Ginefra, Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research
  1. Not-so-opposite ends of the spectrum: CD8+ T cell dysfunction across chronic infection, cancer and autoimmunity.
  2. NK and NKT cells have distinct properties and functions in cancer.
  3. Association of Premature Immune Aging and Cytomegalovirus After Solid Organ Transplant.
  4. miR-181a-regulated pathways in T-cell differentiation and aging.
  5. B7-H7 Is Inducible on T Cells to Regulate Their Immune Response and Serves as a Marker for Exhaustion.
  6. The effect of caloric restriction on the increase in senescence-associated T cells and metabolic disorders in aged mice.
  7. Transcriptional Control of Cell Fate Determination in Antigen-Experienced CD8 T Cells.
  8. The costimulatory activity of Tim-3 requires Akt and MAPK signaling and its recruitment to the immune synapse.
  9. TCF1 in T cell immunity: a broadened frontier.
  1. Nat Immunol. 2021 Jun 17.
    Not-so-opposite ends of the spectrum: CD8+ T cell dysfunction across chronic infection, cancer and autoimmunity.
    Jenna L Collier, Sarah A Weiss, Kristen E Pauken, Debattama R Sen, Arlene H Sharpe.
      CD8+ T cells are critical mediators of cytotoxic effector function in infection, cancer and autoimmunity. In cancer and chronic viral infection, CD8+ T cells undergo a progressive loss of cytokine production and cytotoxicity, a state termed T cell exhaustion. In autoimmunity, autoreactive CD8+ T cells retain the capacity to effectively mediate the destruction of host tissues. Although the clinical outcome differs in each context, CD8+ T cells are chronically exposed to antigen in all three. These chronically stimulated CD8+ T cells share some common phenotypic features, as well as transcriptional and epigenetic programming, across disease contexts. A better understanding of these CD8+ T cell states may reveal novel strategies to augment clearance of chronic viral infection and cancer and to mitigate self-reactivity leading to tissue damage in autoimmunity.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1038/s41590-021-00949-7
  2. Oncogene. 2021 Jun 12.
    NK and NKT cells have distinct properties and functions in cancer.
    Xia Liu, Lingyun Li, Fusheng Si, Lan Huang, Yangjing Zhao, Chenchen Zhang, Daniel F Hoft, Guangyong Peng.
      Natural killer (NK) and natural killer T (NKT) cells are two important cell subsets of the innate immune system. NK and NKT cells share many phenotypes and functions for anti-tumor immunity; however, the dynamic changes in phenotypes and functional interactions within the tumor microenvironment during tumor development and progression are unknown. Here we report that NK and NKT cells have distinct properties, metabolic profiles, and functions during tumor development. Using the mouse E0771 breast cancer and B16 melanoma models, we found that both NK and NKT cells are dynamically involved in the immune responses to cancer but have distinct distributions and phenotypic profiles in tumor sites and other peripheral organs during the course of tumor development and progression. In the early stages of tumor development, both NK and NKT cells exhibit effector properties. In the later cancer stages, NK and NKT cells have impaired cytotoxic capacities and dysfunctional states. NK cells become senescent cells, while NKT cells, other than invariant NKT (iNKT) cells, are exhausted in the advanced cancers. In contrast, iNKT cells develop increases in activation and effector function within the breast tumor microenvironment. In addition, senescent NK cells have heightened glucose and lipid metabolism, but exhausted NKT cells display unbalanced metabolism in tumor microenvironments of both breast cancer and melanoma tumor models. These studies provide a better understanding of the dynamic and distinct functional roles of NK and NKT cells in anti-tumor immunity, which may facilitate the development of novel immunotherapies targeting NK and NKT cells for cancer treatment.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1038/s41388-021-01880-9
  3. Front Immunol. 2021 ;12 661551
    Association of Premature Immune Aging and Cytomegalovirus After Solid Organ Transplant.
    Lauren E Higdon, Claire E Gustafson, Xuhuai Ji, Malaya K Sahoo, Benjamin A Pinsky, Kenneth B Margulies, Holden T Maecker, Jorg Goronzy, Jonathan S Maltzman.
      Immune function is altered with increasing age. Infection with cytomegalovirus (CMV) accelerates age-related immunological changes resulting in expanded oligoclonal memory CD8 T cell populations with impaired proliferation, signaling, and cytokine production. As a consequence, elderly CMV seropositive (CMV+) individuals have increased mortality and impaired responses to other infections in comparison to seronegative (CMV-) individuals of the same age. CMV is also a significant complication after organ transplantation, and recent studies have shown that CMV-associated expansion of memory T cells is accelerated after transplantation. Thus, we investigated whether immune aging is accelerated post-transplant, using a combination of telomere length, flow cytometry phenotyping, and single cell RNA sequencing. Telomere length decreased slightly in the first year after transplantation in a subset of both CMV+ and CMV- recipients with a strong concordance between CD57+ cells and short telomeres. Phenotypically aged cells increased post-transplant specifically in CMV+ recipients, and clonally expanded T cells were enriched for terminally differentiated cells post-transplant. Overall, these findings demonstrate a pattern of accelerated aging of the CD8 T cell compartment in CMV+ transplant recipients.
    Keywords:  Telomere; cytomegalovirus (CMV); flow cytometry; immunosenescence; transplantation immunobiology
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3389/fimmu.2021.661551
  4. Immun Ageing. 2021 Jun 15. 18(1): 28
    miR-181a-regulated pathways in T-cell differentiation and aging.
    Chulwoo Kim, Zhongde Ye, Cornelia M Weyand, Jörg J Goronzy.
      MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are regulatory noncoding RNAs important for many aspects of cellular processes including cell differentiation and proliferation. Functions of numerous miRNAs have been identified in T cells, with miR-181a regulating T cell activation thresholds during thymic T cell development and during activation of peripheral T cells. Intriguingly, miR-181a is implicated in defective antiviral and vaccine responses in older individuals, as its expression declines in naïve T cells with increasing age. Here, we review the pathways that are regulated by miR-181a and that explain the unique role of miR-181a in T cell development, T cell activation and antiviral T cell responses. These studies provide a framework for understanding how a decline in miR-181a expression in T cells could contribute to age-related defects in adaptive immunity. We furthermore review the mechanisms that cause the age-related decline in miR-181a expression and discuss the potential of restoring miR-181a expression or targeting miR-181a-regulated pathways to improve impaired T cell responses in older individuals.
    Keywords:  Infectious disease; Memory T cells; Replication stress; T cell activation; T cell aging; T cell differentiation; Vaccine; miR-181a; microRNA
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1186/s12979-021-00240-1
  5. Front Immunol. 2021 ;12 682627
    B7-H7 Is Inducible on T Cells to Regulate Their Immune Response and Serves as a Marker for Exhaustion.
    Khang Luu, Herbert Schwarz, Andreas Lundqvist.
      The discovery of immune checkpoints highlights the complexity of T cell signalling during an immune response. Upon activation, T cells express several molecules to regulate their function and to prevent overactivation. B7 homolog 7 (B7-H7) is expressed in tumours and associated with a worse prognosis. However, conflicting data regarding its function suggest that it can be both stimulatory and inhibitory. In this study we report that B7-H7 is also expressed on T cells upon cross-linking of CD3 and CD28 and that additional stimulation via CD137 further enhances the expression of B7-H7. B7-H7 is preferentially expressed on exhausted Th1 and Tc1 cells with an impaired secretion of TNF-α and IFN-γ. Blockade of B7-H7 with its natural receptor, recombinant CD28H, enhances T cell proliferation and activation. Thus, B7-H7 represents another target for immunotherapy and a biomarker to select for active effector T cells with relevance for adoptive cell transfer therapy.
    Keywords:  T lymphocyte; exhaustion; immune checkpoint; immunology; immunotherapy
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3389/fimmu.2021.682627
  6. PLoS One. 2021 ;16(6): e0252547
    The effect of caloric restriction on the increase in senescence-associated T cells and metabolic disorders in aged mice.
    Xiaoxiang Yan, Natsumi Imano, Kayoko Tamaki, Motoaki Sano, Ken Shinmura.
      Aging is associated with functional decline in the immune system and increases the risk of chronic diseases owing to smoldering inflammation. In the present study, we demonstrated an age-related increase in the accumulation of Programmed Death-1 (PD-1)+ memory-phenotype T cells that are considered "senescence-associated T cells" in both the visceral adipose tissue and spleen. As caloric restriction is an established intervention scientifically proven to exert anti-aging effects and greatly affects physiological and pathophysiological alterations with advanced age, we evaluated the effect of caloric restriction on the increase in this T-cell subpopulation and glucose tolerance in aged mice. Long-term caloric restriction significantly decreased the number of PD-1+ memory-phenotype cluster of differentiation (CD) 4+ and CD8+ T cells in the spleen and visceral adipose tissue, decreased M1-type macrophage accumulation in visceral adipose tissue, and improved insulin resistance in aged mice. Furthermore, the immunological depletion of PD-1+ T cells reduced adipose inflammation and improved insulin resistance in aged mice. Taken together with our previous report, these results indicate that senescence-related T-cell subpopulations are involved in the development of chronic inflammation and insulin resistance in the context of chronological aging and obesity. Thus, long-term caloric restriction and specific deletion of senescence-related T cells are promising interventions to regulate age-related chronic diseases.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252547
  7. Cold Spring Harb Perspect Biol. 2021 Jun 14. pii: a037945. [Epub ahead of print]
    Transcriptional Control of Cell Fate Determination in Antigen-Experienced CD8 T Cells.
    Shanel Tsuda, Matthew E Pipkin.
      Robust immunity to intracellular infections is mediated by antigen-specific naive CD8 T cells that become activated and differentiate into phenotypically and functionally diverse subsets of effector cells, some of which terminally differentiate and others that give rise to memory cells that provide long-lived protection. This developmental system is an outstanding model with which to elucidate how regulation of chromatin structure and transcriptional control establish gene expression programs that govern cell fate determination, insights from which are likely to be useful for informing the design of immunotherapeutic approaches to engineer durable immunity to infections and tumors. A unifying framework that describes how naive CD8 T cells develop into memory cells is still outstanding. We propose a model that incorporates a common early linear path followed by divergent paths that slowly lose capacity to interconvert and discuss classical and contemporary observations that support these notions, focusing on insights from transcriptional control and chromatin regulation.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1101/cshperspect.a037945
  8. Sci Signal. 2021 Jun 15. pii: eaba0717. [Epub ahead of print]14(687):
    The costimulatory activity of Tim-3 requires Akt and MAPK signaling and its recruitment to the immune synapse.
    Shunsuke Kataoka, Priyanka Manandhar, Judong Lee, Creg J Workman, Hridesh Banerjee, Andrea L Szymczak-Workman, Michael Kvorjak, Jason Lohmueller, Lawrence P Kane.
      Expression of the transmembrane protein Tim-3 is increased on dysregulated T cells undergoing chronic activation, including during chronic infection and in solid tumors. Thus, Tim-3 is generally thought of as an inhibitory protein. We and others previously reported that under some circumstances, Tim-3 exerts paradoxical costimulatory activity in T cells (and other cells), including enhancement of the phosphorylation of ribosomal S6 protein. Here, we examined the upstream signaling pathways that control Tim-3-mediated increases in phosphorylated S6 in T cells. We also defined the localization of Tim-3 relative to the T cell immune synapse and its effects on downstream signaling. Recruitment of Tim-3 to the immune synapse was mediated exclusively by the transmembrane domain, replacement of which impaired the ability of Tim-3 to costimulate T cell receptor (TCR)-dependent S6 phosphorylation. Furthermore, enforced localization of the Tim-3 cytoplasmic domain to the immune synapse in a chimeric antigen receptor still enabled T cell activation. Together, our findings are consistent with a model whereby Tim-3 enhances TCR-proximal signaling under acute conditions.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1126/scisignal.aba0717
  9. Nat Rev Immunol. 2021 Jun 14.
    TCF1 in T cell immunity: a broadened frontier.
    Xudong Zhao, Qiang Shan, Hai-Hui Xue.
      TCF1 and its homologue LEF1 are historically known as effector transcription factors downstream of the WNT signalling pathway and are essential for early T cell development. Recent advances bring TCF1 into the spotlight for its versatile, context-dependent functions in regulating mature T cell responses. In the cytotoxic T cell lineages, TCF1 is required for the self-renewal of stem-like CD8+ T cells generated in response to viral or tumour antigens, and for preserving heightened responses to checkpoint blockade immunotherapy. In the helper T cell lineages, TCF1 is indispensable for the differentiation of T follicular helper and T follicular regulatory cells, and crucially regulates immunosuppressive functions of regulatory T cells. Mechanistic investigations have also identified TCF1 as the first transcription factor that directly modifies histone acetylation, with the capacity to bridge transcriptional and epigenetic regulation. TCF1 also has the potential to become an important clinical biomarker for assessing the prognosis of tumour immunotherapy and the success of viral control in treating HIV and hepatitis C virus infection. Here, we summarize the key findings on TCF1 across the fields of T cell immunity and reflect on the possibility of exploring TCF1 and its downstream transcriptional programmes as therapeutic targets for improving antiviral and antitumour immunity.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1038/s41577-021-00563-6
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