In vivodynamics of antigen-specific regulatory T cells not predicted from behaviorin vitro

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Abstract
Adoptive transfer of antigen-specific CD25+CD4+regulatory T cells was used to analyze the stability of their phenotype, their behavior after immunization, and their mode of suppressing cotransferred naive T cellsin vivo. We found that regulatory T cells maintained their phenotype in the absence of antigen, were not anergicin vivo, and proliferated as extensively as naive CD4+T cells after immunization without losing their suppressive functionin vivoandin vitro. In vivo, the expansion of cotransferred naive T cells was suppressed relatively late in the response such that regulatory T cells expressing mostly IL-10 but not IL-2 or IFN-γ represented the dominant subset of cells. Our results reveal properties of regulatory T cells that were not predicted fromin vitrostudies.