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Updated: Aug 6, 2026

Peptide:MHC Tetramer-based Enrichment of Epitope-specific T cells
Published on: October 22, 2012
Characterization at the single-cell level of naive and primed CD8 T cell cytokine responses
T Walzer1, G Joubert, P M Dubois
1Immunologie Apoptose, CERVI, INSERM U503, 21, Avenue Tony Garnies, 69007 Lyon, France.
Abstract:
The aim of this study was to characterize differences between naive and primed CD8 T cells. Our results show that (i) naive and primed CD8 T cells display similar activation thresholds, with no direct evidence for a difference in their TCR signals, and (ii) primed cells differ mainly in their capacity to secrete IFN-gamma. A comparison of the two populations at the single-cell level demonstrated that the increased production of IFN-gamma by the primed cell subset is due to a larger proportion of single cells that are able to synthesize this cytokine early following activation. These results indicate that the intrinsic effector capabilities of individual CD8 T cells expressing the same TCR are heterogeneous and that cells with identical antigen specificity but increased effector capacities are generated or selected during the primary response.
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