Pulmonary Mycobacterium tuberculosis control associates with CXCR3- and CCR6-expressing antigen-specific Th1 and Th17 cell recruitment
Shanmugasundaram and colleagues used a nonhuman primate model to study T-cell responses associated with latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI). LTBI patients are asymptomatic and are thought to have contained the M. tuberculosis bacteria within granulomatous lesions in the lung. This research group wanted to characterize the immune responses associated with LTBI in order to understand how to prevent the progression to active tuberculosis (TB). In this JCI Insight publication, researchers report that rhesus macaques with LTBI have high levels of M. tuberculosis-specific T cells that produce both IFN-g and IL-17. These T cells also express both CXCR3 and CCR6. HALO AI was used to identify percentage of lung tissue composed of granulomas. In addition, the density of CD4+CXCR3+ cells in lung tissue of non-human primate was determined with HALO image analysis. The Tissue Classifier Add-on and the Highplex FL module of HALO were used for quantification of CD4+, CXCR3+, CD68+CD163+, and CD4+CXCR3+ from immunofluorescence microscopy images.
Shanmugasundaram, Allison N. Bucsan, Shashank R. Ganatra, Chris Ibegbu, Melanie Quezada, Robert V. Blair, Xavier Alvarez, Vijayakumar Velu, Deepak Kaushal, and Jyothi Rengarajan
JCI Insight | First published 17 June 2020 | DOI https://doi.org/10.1172/jci.insight.137858