Lower T cell inhibitory receptor level in mononuclear cells from cord blood compared with peripheral blood

T cell inhibitory receptors play important role in maintaining T cell homeostasis. The feature of such negative costimulator signal transduction pathway in cord blood (CB) T cells remains unclear. In this study, the expression levels of T cell inhibitory receptors including programmed death-1 (PD-1), cytotoxic T lymphocyte antigen-4 (CTLA-4), T cell immunoglobulin mucin-3 (Tim-3), lymphocyte activation gene-3 (LAG-3) and B and T lymphocyte attenuator (BTLA) were characterized in CB and compared with peripheral blood (PB). Significant lower expression of PD-1, CTLA-4, LAG-3 and BTLA was found in CB, while similar expression level of Tim-3 was showed between CB and PB. Together, different expression pattern of such T cell inhibitory receptor in CB is worthy to further discuss their role on immune response when CB is used in cord blood stem cell transplantation as well as allogeneic chimeric antigen receptor T-cell producing.