Figure 1. Effects of HDACis on the viability of PBMC CD8⁺ and CD4⁺ T-cells.

A–C. PBMC were treated with HDACi drugs at the indicated concentrations for either 4 or 21 hours (drugs left in) then stained with Annexin-V-Fitc (stains phosphatidyl serine on apoptotic cells), 7-AAD (stains DNA of dead cells), CD4 pacific blue, and CD8 alexa-fluor 700 and analyzed by flow cytometry. A. Shown are representative flow cytometry data indicating gating on dead (Annexin-V⁺7-AAD⁺) and dying (Annexin-v^bright7-AAD^dim/−) cells. B, C. Shown are summary data for treatments PBMC gated on CD8⁺ cells (left panel) or CD4⁺ cells (right panel) with romidepsin and panobinostat (B) or with SAHA (C) at the indicated doses for the indicated times. P values for comparisons between the multiple doses of romidepsin tested and the untreated condition were calculated by Kruskal-Wallis test and found to be significant for ex vivo CD4⁺ T-cells (p = 0.0080). Post-hoc Dunn's multiple comparison tests were performed for each of these and the indicated p values are adjusted for multiple testing. Other drug treatment conditions and cell types were not significant by Kruskal-Wallis tests. D. The effects of HDACi treatment on the viability of an HIV-Gag-SLYNTVATL-specific T-cell clone were determined in the same manner as for PBMC, including use of the same statistical tests. Error bars represent SD. * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001, **** p<0.0001.