T Lymphocytes in Human Gut Epithelium Preferentially Express the α/β Antigen Receptor and are often CD45/UCHL1‐Positive

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Abstract
A revived interest in intraepithelial lymphocytes (IEL) has been elicited by several recent reports suggesting that murine and avian intestinal epithelium contains mainly CD3+CD8+ cells expressing the γ/δ T-cell receptor (TcR) for antigen; this contrasts with systemically distributed T cells which preferentially employ the TcRα/β. An anatomical dichotomy in the distribution of these two T-cell lineages has hence been proposed. Here we report that this concept does not hold true in man. In situ studies with monoclonal TcR-framework antibodies showed that most (70–90%) human intestinal IEL (which are mainly CD3+CD8+) expressed TcRα/β. Moreover, almost half of the intraepithelial CD3+ cells were positive for the smallest (180 kDa) CD45 molecule (UCHL1); this probably reflected that they are antigen-primed and thus represent traditional CD3+CD8+α/β+ memory T cells.