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. 2019 Dec 12;10:2832. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2019.02832

Figure 2.

Figure 2

Long term ibrutinib therapy decreases the frequency of virus-specific CD8+ T cells and improves the functional response to stimulation with viral peptides. PBMCs from patients with CLL were stimulated with pooled CMV and EBV peptides. The CD8+ T cells producing IFNγ and TNFα were identified through intracellular staining and flow cytometric analysis. The percentage of cytokine producing CD8+ T cells were compared between patients before and during ibrutinib therapy. (A) (i) With pooled CMV peptide stimulation, significantly increased frequencies of IFNγ producing CD8+ T cells were found in patients with CLL during ibrutinib therapy (p = 0.048). (ii) With pooled EBV peptide stimulation, significantly increased frequencies of TNFα producing CD8+ T cells were found in patients during ibrutinib therapy (p = 0.047). (B) An example of the flow cytometric plot of EBV tetramer staining is shown, demonstrating the reduced frequency of EBV specific CD8+ T cells during ibrutinib therapy. (C) The frequency of CMV specific CD8+ T cells and EBV-specific CD8+ T cells in B-CLL patients before and during ibrutinib therapy were compared. The frequencies of both virus-specific cells decreased during ibrutinib treatment in B-CLL patients (p = 0.046 for CMV and p = 0.03 for EBV).