Eliciting the T cell fate with Notch

Dil Afroz Sultana1, J Jeremiah Bell, Daniel A Zlotoff

  • 1Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.

Multipotent progenitors arrive at the thymus via the blood. Constraining the non-T cell fates of these progenitors while promoting the T cell fate is a major task of the thymus. Notch appears to be the initial trigger for a developmental program that eventually results in T cell lineage commitment. Several downstream targets of Notch are known, but the specific roles of each are poorly understood. A greater understanding of how Notch and other thymic signals direct progenitors to a T cell fate could be useful for translational work. For example, such work could eventually allow for the generation of fully competent T cells in vitro that could supplement the waning T cell numbers and function in the elderly and boost T cell-mediated immunity in patients with immunodeficiency and after stem cell transplantation.

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