Consumer-grade smart watches have penetrated the health research space rapidly since 2014. Smart watch technical function, acceptability, and effectiveness in supporting health must be validated in larger field studies that enroll actual participants living with the conditions these devices target.

CD4 T cell help for B cells is critical for effective Ab responses. Although many of the molecules involved in helper functions of naive CD4 T cells have been characterized, much less is known about the helper capabilities of memory CD4 T cells, an important consideration for the design of vaccines that aim to prime protective memory CD4 T cells. In this study, we demonstrate that memory CD4 T cells enable B cells to expand more rapidly and class switch earlier than do primary responding CD4 T cells. This accelerated response does not require large numbers of memory cells, and similar numbers of primary responding cells provide less effective help than do memory cells. However, only memory CD4 T cells that express the B cell follicle homing molecule, CXCR5, are able to accelerate the response, suggesting that the rapidity of the Ab response depends on the ability of CD4 memory T cells to migrate quickly toward B cells.

Vaccines can greatly reduce the spread of and deaths from many infectious diseases. However, many infections have no successful vaccines. Better understanding of the generation of protective CD8 memory T cells by vaccination is essential for the rational design of new vaccines that aim to prime cellular immune responses. Here we demonstrate that the combination of two adjuvants that are currently licensed for use in humans can be used to prime long-lived memory CD8 T cells that protect mice from viral challenge. The universally used adjuvant, aluminum salts, primed long-lived memory CD8 T cells; however, effective cytotoxic T-cell differentiation occurred only in the presence of an additional adjuvant, monophosphoryl lipid A (MPL). MPL-induced IL-6 was required for cytotoxic differentiation. The IL-6 acted by inducing granzyme B production and reducing expression of inhibitory molecule PD1 on the surface of the primed CD8 T cells. CD8 memory T cells generated by antigen delivered with both aluminum salts and MPL provided significant protection from influenza A challenge. These adjuvants could be used in human vaccines to prime protective memory CD8 T cells.

A major goal for immunotherapy is to tolerize the immune cells that coordinate tissue damage in autoimmune and alloantigen responses. CD4 T cells play a central role in many of these conditions and improved antigen-specific regulation or removal of these cells could revolutionize current treatments. A confounding factor is that little is known about whether and how tolerance is induced in memory CD4 T cells. We used MHC class II tetramers to track and analyze a population of endogenous antigen-specific memory CD4 T cells exposed to soluble peptide in the absence of adjuvant. We found that such memory T cells proliferated and reentered the memory pool apparently unperturbed by the incomplete activation signals provided by the peptide. Upon further restimulation in vivo, CD4 memory T cells that had been previously exposed to peptide proliferated, provided help to primary responding B cells, and migrated to inflamed sites. However, these reactivated memory cells failed to survive. The reduction in T-cell number was marked by low expression of the antiapoptotic molecule B cell lymphoma 2 (Bcl2) and increased expression of activated caspase molecules. Consequently, these cells failed to sustain a delayed-type hypersensitivity response. Moreover, following two separate exposures to soluble antigen, no T-cell recall response and no helper activity for B cells could be detected. These results suggest that the induction of tolerance in memory CD4 T cells is possible but that deletion and permanent removal of the antigen-specific T cells requires reactivation following exposure to the tolerogenic antigen.