Ultimately, further studies of this population may help us understand and improve the efficacy of immunotherapies that influence IL-2 signaling. The IL-2 receptor alpha chain learn more (CD25) has been used as a marker for Treg cells (CD4+CD25HIFOXP3+) as well as activated T cells [2]. However, analysis of CD4+ cells using two different monoclonal antibodies to CD25 clearly revealed a population of resting FOXP3− human CD4+ T cells that expressed intermediate levels of CD25 [25]. We found that these

two commercially available anti-human CD25 antibodies revealed a significant proportion of CD4+FOXP3− T cells expressed intermediate levels of CD25 (Supporting Information Fig. 1A). We subsequently used clone 4E3 for the remainder of this study and found that CD25INT CD4+ T cells were found in all individuals studied, comprising 35–65% of all CD4+ T cells in normal donors. Representative FACS plots from four individuals are shown in Fig. 1A. To show that this

new antibody recognized functional CD25, CD4+ T cells from fresh PBMCs were stimulated with various concentrations of rhIL-2 and then evaluated for upregulation of intra-cellular pSTAT5, as pSTAT5 is Selleck FDA approved Drug Library downstream of IL-2 signaling (Fig. 1B). Cells expressing higher levels of CD25 responded to lower concentrations of IL-2, while cells expressing little or no CD25 required higher concentrations of rhIL-2. When preincubated with an anti-CD25 blocking antibody that does not interfere

with binding of the 4E3 anti-CD25 antibody, the cells expressing intermediate and high levels of CD25 were unable to respond to the lower concentrations of rhIL-2 but did respond to a higher O-methylated flavonoid dose of rhIL-2, presumably through the β and γ chains of the IL-2 receptor (Fig. 1B). Although we found the CD25INTFOXP3− cells mainly among CD4+ T cells, a small proportion of resting CD8+ T cells also expressed CD25 (Fig. 1C). CD25INT CD4+ T cells were interrogated by flow cytometry for expression of markers of naïve and memory cells. The majority of CD25INT cells expressed the memory marker CD95 (Fig. 1D) [26]. This observation was reaffirmed by the expression of the naïve and memory markers CD45RA and CD45RO (Supporting Information Fig. 1B) [27]. In the normal individuals studied, CD25INT T cells comprise the majority (as much as 80%) of memory cells in the CD4+ T-cell compartment (data not shown). We were unable to find a significant relationship between the percent of CD4+ that were CD25INT as a function of age within the cohort of healthy individuals used in this study (data not shown). We next evaluated whether CD95+CD25NEGFOXP3− and CD95+CD25INTFOXP3− CD4+ T cells maintain their respective CD25 phenotype over time.