Age-dependent changes in the expression of regulatory cell surface ligands in activated human T-cells.

Background: The immune system consists of multiple preformed and more specific adaptive immune responses, which are all subject to both positive and negative regulation. Programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) is a cell surface ligand implicated in the induction of anergy, Inducible T-cell Costimulator (ICOS) plays a stimulatory role in the development of both CD4+ and CD8+ T-cells, Cytotoxic T-Lymphocyte Antigen 4 (CTLA-4) plays a role in inhibitory regulation of T-cell activity, and T cell immunoglobulin and mucin protein 3 (Tim-3) has been described as a negative regulatory molecule in CD4+ helper type 1 cells and CD8+ cytotoxic type 1 cells. Each of these ligands is induced with T-cell activation allowing greater opportunity to have a regulatory role.