RESEARCH ARTICLE


Human γδ T Cells and Immune Regulation



Zheng W. Chen*
Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Center for Primate Biomedical Research, University of Illinois College of Medicine, USA


© 2009 Zheng W. Chen;

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the 835 S. Wolcott Ave, MC790, Chicago, IL 60612, USA; Tel: 312355-0531; Fax: 312996-5725; E-mail: zchen@uic.edu


Abstract

Human γδ T cells appear to belong to non-classical T cells with both innate and adaptive immune features. Vγ2Vδ2 (also termed Vγ9Vδ2) T cell subset exists only in primates, and in humans that represents a major γδ T cell subpopulation in the blood. Vγ2Vδ2 T cells remain to be the only γδ T cell subpopulation that can recognize a welldefined foreign microbial phosphoantigen. This article reviews the recent progress in our understanding immune regulation of Vγ2Vδ2 T cells.

Keywords: Immune regulation, CD4+CD25+Foxp3+, Regulatory T cells, γδ T cells, Phosphoantigen, HMBPP, HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis.