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Updated: Jan 28, 2026

3D Organotypic Co-culture Model Supporting Medullary Thymic Epithelial Cell Proliferation, Differentiation and Promiscuous Gene Expression
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Medullary thymic epithelial cells: Deciphering the functional diversity beyond promiscuous gene expression

Camila Ribeiro1, Nuno L Alves1, Pedro Ferreirinha1

  • 1i3S - Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde, Universidade do Porto, Portugal; IBMC - Instituto de Biologia Molecular e Celular, Universidade do Porto, Portugal.

Immunology Letters
|March 12, 2019
PubMed

Within the thymus, cortical and medullary thymic epithelial cells (cTECs and mTECs, respectively) provide unique microenvironments for the development of T cells that are responsive to diverse foreign antigens while self-tolerant. Essential for tolerance induction, mTECs play a critical role in negative selection and T regulatory cell differentiation. In this article, we review the current knowledge on the functional diversity within mTECs and discuss how these novel subsets contribute to tolerance induction and are integrated in the complex blueprint of mTEC differentiation.

Keywords:
Medullary thymic epithelial cellsThymic epithelial cellsThymus

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