Stimulation with antibodies to CD3 and CD28 coimmobilized on beads can be used to significantly expand T cells ex vivo. With CD4 T cells from HIV-infected patients, this expansion usually is accompanied by complete suppression of viral replication, presumed to be caused by down-regulation of the viral coreceptor CCR5 and up-regulation of CCR5 ligands. Here we show that this suppression occurs in total CD4 T cells acutely infected with R5 HIV, but not in purified CD62L ؊ memory CD4 T cells. The lack of complete suppression in these memory cells, typically comprising 10 -40% of total CD4 T cells, occurs despite high levels of CCR5 ligand secretion and down-regulation of CCR5. Significantly, adding back naïve or CD62L ؉ memory CD4 T cells inhibits the viral replication in the CD62L ؊ cells, with the naïve cells capable of completely repressing the virus. Although this inhibition was previously thought to be specific to bead-bound anti-CD3͞CD28 stimulation, we show that the same suppression is obtained with sufficiently strong anti-CD3͞B7.1 stimulation. Our results show that inhibitory mechanisms, expressed predominantly by strongly stimulated naïve CD4 T cells and mediated independently of CCR5-binding chemokines, play a role in the inhibition of R5 HIV replication in CD4 T cells upon CD28 costimulation. In contrast to these observations, Levine et al. (6) reported that stimulation of CD4 T cells of HIV-infected patients with anti-CD3 and anti-CD28 coimmobilized on Sepharose beads ''clears'' HIV from infected cultures, allowing ex vivo expansion of autologous CD4 T cells in the absence of antiretroviral drugs. The same authors later reported that this mode of stimulation decreases expression of the main HIV coreceptor CCR5 (7) and induces high levels of the HIV-inhibitory CCR5 ligands RANTES, macrophage inflammatory protein (MIP)-1␣, and MIP-1 (hereafter, CCR5 ligands) (8), that block access to CCR5, resulting in inhibition of CCR5-dependent (R5), but not of CXCR4-dependent (X4), HIV replication.Therefore, anti-CD3͞CD28 stimulation can result in decreased or enhanced HIV replication, apparently depending on the mode of stimulation [i.e., soluble Abs vs. Abs immobilized on beads (3, 6)]. The differential effects of these modes of stimulation on CCR5 expression and CCR5 ligand secretion do not appear to resolve the controversy. Creson et al. (9) reported that continuous passage of CD4 T cells on plastic culture dishes coated with anti-CD3͞CD28 Abs failed to inhibit R5 HIV infection, despite decreased expression of CCR5 and secretion of CCR5 ligands at levels comparable to those achieved by stimulation with anti-CD3͞CD28 mAb-conjugated beads.Our findings indicate that the resolution of this paradox lies in the strength of T cell stimulation and in the heterogeneity of CD4 T cells. CD4 T cells can be divided into naïve T cells that express both CD45RA and CD62L and memory T cells (10, 11). Memory cells can be further divided into a number of subsets, including M1 (CD45RA). We and others (12-15) have shown that naïve...