Lymphocytes residing in the intestinal epithelium are exclusively T cells and account for one of the largest collection of T cells in the organism. However, their function remains obscure. We and others have shown that the development of intestinal intraepithelial T cells is compromised in mutant mice prone to chronic intestinal inflammation. These results led us to directly assess their role in regulating the development of colitis secondary to transfer of primary splenic TCRαβ+CD4+CD45RBhi T cells into severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) mice. Here we demonstrate that prior reconstitution of SCID recipients with intraintestinal TCRαβ+CD4−CD8α+β− T cells prevents disease, and does so in an interleukin (IL)-10–dependent fashion. In contrast, reconstitution with either TCRγδ+ or TCRαβ+CD4− CD8α+β+ intestinal T cells did not prevent colitis. TCRαβ+CD4−8α+β− T cells are unique to the intestinal epithelium of both rodents and humans. Previous repertoire analyses of TCRαβ+CD4−CD8α+β− T cells revealed a high proportion of cells expressing high affinity, self-specific TCR within this subset. We demonstrate that monoclonal, self specific TCRαβ+CD4−CD8α+β− cells derived from TCR transgenic mice also prevent the onset of colitis. Thus, intestinal TCRαβ+CD4−CD8α+β− T cells, selected based on their self-reactivity, maintain gut integrity in a IL-10–dependent fashion.
Recent studies demonstrate that abnormalities in PTEN may be one of the most frequent genetic events observed in human cancers. PTEN dysfunction leads to tumorigenesis through unopposed survival signals mediated via activated protein kinase B (PKB), which may also be associated with hormone-independence. We therefore investigated the relationship between PTEN-PKB and receptor status in human breast cancer. Several molecular variables, including immunohistochemical staining for PTEN, PKB (phosphorylated on ser473), p53 and p21 were evaluated. The p53 gene was sequenced from exons 2-11. Seventy-eight participants in a randomised breast cancer trial served as the cohort for our study. Twenty-eight of 77 (36%) patients' tumours demonstrated absent or reduced PTEN expression; 17 of 78 (22%) tumours over-expressed P-PKB. A significant inverse relationship was observed between reduced PTEN and increased P-PKB expression. Reduced PTEN also correlated with reduced ER or PR expression. None of the molecular variables correlated with survival. ER and PR negative tumours, however, experienced a significantly inferior disease-free survival than other ER/PR status tumours. Immunohistochemical analyses of ER expression in mammary carcinomas arising in PTEN heterozygous knockout mice did not demonstrate a reduction in ER immunoreactivity, in comparison to wildtype mice. Our data demonstrate that the PTEN-PKB pathway is abnormal in approximately 1 ⁄3 of lymph node negative breast cancer. Dysregulated PTEN-PKB was also associated with reduced ER/PR expression, but this does not appear to be a simple direct causal relationship. These observations support the contention that dysregulation in PTEN-PKB contributes to disease progression and hormone resistance of human breast cancer.
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