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Updated: Aug 24, 2026

Use of Single Chain MHC Technology to Investigate Co-agonism in Human CD8+ T Cell Activation
Published on: February 28, 2019
The CD8 isoform CD8alphaalpha is not a functional homologue of the TCR co-receptor CD8alphabeta
Denise Gangadharan1, Hilde Cheroutre
1Division of Developmental Immunology, La Jolla Institute for Allergy & Immunology, 10355 Science Center Drive, San Diego, California 92121, USA.
Abstract:
Although structurally similar, CD8alphabeta and CD8alphaalpha have notably diverted with regard to function. Whereas CD8alphabeta functions as a T-cell receptor (TCR) co-receptor on MHC-class-I-restricted thymocytes and mature T cells, CD8alphaalpha is unable to support conventional positive selection, and can be expressed on T cells independent of the MHC restriction of their TCR. CD8alphaalpha induction is consistent with antigenic stimulation through the TCR, and recent developments have now shown that CD8alphaalpha induced on agonist-triggered immature thymocytes, antigenic-stimulated conventional CD8alphabeta T cells and mucosal T cells mediates the specific modulation of TCR activation signals to facilitate their survival and differentiation into various specialized T-cell subsets.
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