Active Maintenance of T Cell Memory in Acute and Chronic Viral Infection Depends on Continuous Expression of FOXO1

Authors:

• Utzschneider, Daniel T.
• Delpoux, Arnaud
• Wieland, Dominik
• Huang, Xin
• Lai, Chen-Yen
• Hofmann, Maike
• Thimme, Robert
• Hedrick, Stephen M.

Details:

Cell Reports, Volume 22, Issue 13, 2018-03-27

Article Link: Click here

Immunity following an acutely resolved infection or the long-term equipoise of chronic viral infections often depends on the maintenance of antigen-specific CD8+ T cells, yet the ongoing transcriptional requirements of these cells remain unclear. We show that active and continuous programming by FOXO1 is required for the functional maintenance of a memory population. Upon Foxo1 deletion following resolution of an infection, memory cells rapidly lost their characteristic gene expression, gradually declined in number, and were impaired in self-renewal. This was extended to chronic infections, as a loss of FOXO1 during a persistent viral infection led to a rapid decline of the TCF7 (a.k.a. TCF1)-expressing memory-like subset of CD8+ T cells. We further establish FOXO1 regulation as a characteristic of human memory CD8+ T cells. Overall, we show that the molecular and functional longevity of a memory T cell population is actively maintained by the transcription factor FOXO1.