Takeuchi et al. demonstrate that CRTAM identifies CD4 T cells with cytotoxic function, and present new insights into CD4+CTL development.

Immune surveillance system can detect more efficiently secretory tumor-specific antigens, which are superior as a target for cancer immunotherapy. On the contrary, immune tolerance can be induced in the thymus when a tumor antigen is massively secreted into circulation. Thus, the secretion of tumor-specific antigen may have contradictory roles in tumor immunity in a context-dependent manner. However, it remains elusive on the precise cellular mechanism of intrathymic immune tolerance against tumor antigens. We previously demonstrated that a minor thymic conventional dendritic cell (cDC) subset, CD8α − Sirpα + cDCs, but not the major subset, CD8α + Sirpα − cDCs can selectively capture blood-borne antigens and crucially contribute to the self-tolerance. In the present study, we further demonstrated that Sirpα + cDCs can capture a blood-borne antigen leaking inside the interlobular vascular-rich regions (IVRs). Blood-borne antigen selectively captured by Sirpα + cDCs can induce antigen-specific Treg generation or negative selection, depending on the immunogenicity of the presented antigen. Furthermore, CCR2 expression by thymic Sirpα + cDCs and abundant expression of its ligands, particularly, CCL2 by tumor-bearing mice prompted us to examine the function of thymic Sirpα + cDCs in tumor-bearing mice. Interestingly, tumor-bearing mice deposited CCL2 inside IVRs in the thymus. Moreover, tumor formation induced the accumulation of Sirpα + cDCs in IVRs under the control of CCR2-CCL2 axis and enhanced their capacity to take up antigens, resulting in the shift from Treg differentiation to negative selection. Finally, intrathymic negative selection similarly ensued in CCR2-competent mice once the tumor-specific antigen was secreted into bloodstream. Thus, we demonstrated that thymic Sirpα + cDCs crucially contribute to this novel process of intrathymic tumor immune tolerance.

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