The life cycle of a T cell after vaccination – where does immune ageing strike?

Summary Vaccination is the optimal intervention to prevent the increased morbidity and mortality from infection in older individuals and to maintain immune health during ageing. To optimize benefits from vaccination, strategies have to be developed that overcome the defects in an adaptive immune res...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Clinical and experimental immunology 2017-01, Vol.187 (1), p.71-81
Main Authors: Kim, C., Fang, F., Weyand, C. M., Goronzy, J. J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adjuvants, Immunologic - therapeutic use
Aging
Aging - immunology
Animals
Cell Differentiation
Cell Proliferation
Humans
Immunologic Memory
Immunosenescence
Lymphocyte Activation
Lymphocytes
Review
T cell memory
T cell receptor repertoire
T cell receptors
T cell response
T-Lymphocytes - immunology
Vaccination - methods
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Summary:Summary Vaccination is the optimal intervention to prevent the increased morbidity and mortality from infection in older individuals and to maintain immune health during ageing. To optimize benefits from vaccination, strategies have to be developed that overcome the defects in an adaptive immune response that occur with immune ageing. Most current approaches are concentrated on activating the innate immune system by adjuvants to improve the induction of a T cell response. This review will focus upon T cell‐intrinsic mechanisms that control how a T cell is activated, expands rapidly to differentiate into short‐lived effector cells and into memory precursor cells, with short‐lived effector T cells then mainly undergoing apoptosis and memory precursor cells surviving as long‐lived memory T cells. Insights into each step of this longitudinal course of a T cell response that takes place over a period of several weeks is beginning to allow identifying interventions that can improve this process of T cell memory generation and specifically target defects that occur with ageing. T cell responses to vaccinations are a staged process starting with activation of antigen‐specific T cells followed by expansion and differentiation into short‐lived effector and memory precursor cells and then attrition with memory precursor cells surviving as long‐lived memory T cells. Each of these stages is regulated by T cell‐extrinsic as well as T cell‐intrinsic mechanisms, several of which have been shown to be affected by immune aging and therefore represent promising targets for immune intervention to enhance the benefit from vaccination in an older population.
ISSN:0009-9104
1365-2249
DOI:10.1111/cei.12829