Retinoic Acid Enhances Foxp3 Induction Indirectly by Relieving Inhibition from CD4+CD44hi Cells

Abstract

Summary The CD4+Foxp3+ lineage of regulatory T (Treg) cells plays a key role in controlling immune and autoimmune responses. Treg cells originate primarily during T cell differentiation in the thymus, but conversion of mature T lymphocytes to Foxp3-positivity can be elicited by several means, including activation in the presence of transforming growth factor (TGF)β in vitro. Retinoic Acid (RA), the ubiquitous morphogen that exerts a particular shepherding effect on the gut immune system, increases TGFβ–induced expression of Foxp3, an effect shown here to be mediated through RA receptor (RAR)α. Part of RA’s influence may be due to it’s ability to down-modulate the receptor for IL-6, a cytokine that inhibits Foxp3 expression, but this effect appeared to be of relatively minor importance. Rather, RA negatively affected a population of CD4+ cells with a CD44hi phenotype, akin to that of memory or effector cells, which inhibited the TGFβ-induced conversion of naïve CD4+ T cells. This “contra-conversion” activity was mediated, at least in part, through the synthesis of a set of cytokines (IL-4, IL-21, IFNγ), which in combination had a potent dampening effect on Foxp3 induction. RA, via RARα, elicited a coordinated shut-down of the whole program of cytokine expression in CD44hi cells. The in vivo relevance of this observation was established by transferring RA-sensitive OT-II T cells, which showed less effective conversion to Foxp3+ in RARα-deficient hosts. Thus, CD44hi T cells can actively restrain the induction of Foxp3, and this balance can be shifted or fine tuned by RA.