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Exclusion of circulating T cells from the thymus does not apply in the neonatal period

C D Surh1, J Sprent, S R Webb

  • 1Department of Immunology, Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California 92037.

The Journal of Experimental Medicine
|February 1, 1993
PubMed

Although T cells arise in the thymus, migration of mature postthymic T cells back to the thymus is very limited in adult mice and is restricted to activated cells. In neonates, by contrast, we present evidence that circulating CD4+ and CD8+ T cells with a naive/resting phenotype readily enter the thymus after intravenous injection and remain there for prolonged periods. The migration of resting T cells to the neonatal thymus is largely limited to an unusual subset of cells which lacks expression of the lymph node homing receptor, leukocyte-endothelial cell adhesion molecule 1 (LECAM-1) (MEL-14). Migration of mature T cells to the thymus in neonates may be important for self-tolerance induction.

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