Ontogeny of different subsets of yellow fever virus-specific circulatory CXCR5(+) CD4(+) T cells after yellow fever vaccination

Monitoring the frequency of circulatory CXCR5(+) (cCXCR5(+)) CD4(+) T cells in periphery blood provides a potential biomarker to draw inferences about T follicular helper (T(FH)) activity within germinal center. However, cCXCR5(+) T cells are highly heterogeneous in their expression of ICOS, PD1 and CD38 and the relationship between different cCXCR5 subsets as delineated by these markers remains unclear. We applied class II tetramer reagents and mass cytometry to investigate the ontogeny of different subsets of cCXCR5(+) T cell following yellow fever immunization. Through unsupervised analyses of mass cytometry data, we show yellow fever virus-specific cCXCR5 T cells elicited by vaccination were initially CD38(+)ICOS(+)PD1(+), but then transitioned to become CD38(+)ICOS(−)PD1(+) and CD38(−)ICOS(−)PD1(+) before coming to rest as a CD38(−)ICOS(−)PD1(−) subset. These results imply that most antigen-specific cCXCR5(+) T cells, including the CD38(−)ICOS(−)PD1(−) CXCR5(+) T cells are derived from the CXCR5(+)CD38(+)ICOS(+)PD1(+) subset, the subset that most resembles preT(FH)/T(FH) in the germinal center.