Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 9, 2026

Isolation of CD4+ T-cells and Analysis of Circulating T-follicular Helper (cTfh) Cell Subsets from Peripheral Blood Using 6-color Flow Cytometry
07:39

Isolation of CD4+ T-cells and Analysis of Circulating T-follicular Helper (cTfh) Cell Subsets from Peripheral Blood Using 6-color Flow Cytometry

Published on: January 7, 2019

The elusive identity of T follicular helper cells

Di Yu1, Carola G Vinuesa

  • 1Immunology, Garvan Institute of Medical Research, Sydney, NSW 2010, Australia.

Trends in Immunology
|September 3, 2010
PubMed

Follicular helper T (Tfh) cells provide help to B cells and allow formation of long-lived antibody responses. Despite an improved understanding of the molecular program that drives Tfh cell formation, their definition remains elusive: neither follicular homing ability, Bcl-6 expression nor IL-21 secretion are exclusive properties of T cells that help B cells, and not all follicular T cells are B cell helpers. Indeed some follicular T cells appear to be suppressive. Furthermore, Tfh cells evolve during an immune response and B cells that have recently bound antigen, germinal center (GC) B cells and plasmablasts interact with phenotypically distinct Tfh cells. Here we propose that distinction between non-GC Tfh and GC Tfh cells might reconcile emerging controversies on Tfh cytokine secretion and the requirement of T-B cell interactions and SAP expression for Tfh formation.

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