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Updated: Jul 5, 2026

Lymphocyte Isolation from Human Skin for Phenotypic Analysis and Ex Vivo Cell Culture
Published on: April 8, 2016
Epidermal keratinocytes do not activate peripheral T-cells: interleukin-10 as a possible regulator
Rocío Isabel Domínguez-Castillo1, Erika Sánchez-Guzmán, Federico Castro-Muñozledo
1Departamento de Biología Celular, Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del IPN, DF, Mexico.
Abstract:
The immunogenicity of allogeneic cultured human epidermal keratinocytes (cHEKs) has been studied in several models with contradictory results. We studied human T-cell activation in an in vitro assay by incubating, for 4 and 24 hr, cHEK confluent sheets with human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC); parallel HEK cultures were incubated with interferon (IFN)-gamma to induce the expression of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecules before their interaction with PBMC. T-cell activation was evaluated by flow cytometry. T cells neither expressed the early and late activation markers CD69 and CD25, respectively, nor proliferated after incubation with the epidermal sheets, despite the IFN-gamma-induced expression of MHC and adhesion molecules in cHEKs. Interleukin (IL)-10 was detected in the medium from the co-cultured PBMC and HEK sheets, but not from HEK alone. The results suggest that HEKs are unable to stimulate T lymphocytes through secretion of cytokines that might contribute to the immunosuppressive effect in this in vitro model.
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