Umbilical-Cord-Derived Mesenchymal Stromal Cells Modulate 26 Out of 41 T Cell Subsets from Systemic Sclerosis Patients

Abstract

Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is an immune-mediated disease wherein T cells are particularly implicated, presenting a poor prognosis and limited therapeutic options. Thus, mesenchymal-stem/stromal-cell (MSC)-based therapies can be of great benefit to SSc patients given their immunomodulatory, anti-fibrotic, and pro-angiogenic potential, which is associated with low toxicity. In this study, peripheral blood mononuclear cells from healthy individuals (HC, n = 6) and SSc patients (n = 9) were co-cultured with MSCs in order to assess how MSCs affected the activation and polarization of 58 different T cell subsets, including Th1, Th17, and Treg. It was found that MSCs downregulated the activation of 26 out of the 41 T cell subsets identified within CD4+, CD8+, CD4+CD8+, CD4-CD8-, and γδ T cells in SSc patients (HC: 29/42) and affected the polarization of 13 out of 58 T cell subsets in SSc patients (HC: 22/64). Interestingly, SSc patients displayed some T cell subsets with an increased activation status and MSCs were able to downregulate all of them. This study provides a wide-ranging perspective of how MSCs affect T cells, including minor subsets. The ability to inhibit the activation and modulate the polarization of several T cell subsets, including those implicated in SSc’s pathogenesis, further supports the potential of MSC-based therapies to regulate T cells in a disease whose onset/development may be due to immune system’s malfunction.

Bariatric Surgery Induces Alterations in the Immune Profile of Peripheral Blood T Cells

“…PB immune cells were identified and characterized by flow cytometry, using a stainlyse-wash procedure previously described [20][21][22]. In summary, 100 µL of PB was incubated with the monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) indicated in Table 4, in the presence of 50 µL of Brilliant stain buffer (Becton Dickinson Biosciences (BD), San Jose, CA, USA), for 30 min in the dark and at room temperature.…”