Immunology Diagnosis

Both CD71 and CD95 are upregulated in the mid-early phase of T cell activation and dysfunctional expression may be useful measures of T cell dysfunction in various disease states

Human T cells are generally analyzed for expression of CD4 and CD8 to classify them as either of these two major classes of effector T cells.

Memory T cell populations are heterogeneous in phenotype and function and many questions remain as to the mechanisms mediating their long term persistence.  Recent research by several groups have described populations of antigen-experienced T cells within human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) that exhibit stem cell-like characteristics: increased self-renewal capacity and the ability to derive the more differentiated central and effector memory and effector populations in vitro and in vivo, and may thus be the cell type mediating memory T cell persistence.

There are many strategies for assessing the function of T cells from human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC).

Forkhead box P3 (FoxP3)+ CD4+ T cells, known as regulatory T cells or TREGs, are a class of negative regulatory T cells that function to suppress immune responses, thereby establishing tolerance, preventing autoimmunity, and allowing tumor escapes...

PBMC, flow cytometry, peripheral blood mononuclear cells