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International Immunology Advance Access published online on July 25, 2008
International Immunology, doi:10.1093/intimm/dxn088
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© The Japanese Society for Immunology. 2008. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

What roles do regulatory T cells play in the control of the adaptive immune response?

Melvin Cohn

Conceptual Immunology Group, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, 10010 North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA

Correspondence to: Correspondence to: M. Cohn; E-mail: cohn{at}salk.edu

The immune system, like many systems responsive to specific stimuli, requires feedback regulation. The key regulatory element determining antigen-specific responsiveness is the effector T helper. As the response tends to overshoot, a feedback control of the magnitude of the response is critical to avoid immunopathology. This is the proposed role of the effector T suppressor (Ts). The reasons for this interpretation of the data are discussed as are the reasons that the competing postulate is ruled out, namely that Ts function in determining the self-non-self-discrimination. The regulatory T cell family consists of two lineages, T helpers and Ts. Differentiated derivatives of the T helper lineage drive the expression and amplification of specific classes of defensive effector cells. Ts feedback to limit the magnitude of the process so that debilitating immunopathology is acceptably infrequent.

Keywords: effector response, T helpers, Tregs, T suppressors, self-non-self

Transmitting editor: H. Kikutani

Received 1 May 2008, accepted 9 July 2008.


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