Fig. 8. STING deficiency promotes recipient antigen presenting cell (APC) survival and diminishes donor CD8⁺ T cell activation early after MHC-mismatched aHSCT.

(A) Total spleen cells from BALB/c-WT or BALB/c-STING^−/− recipients 24 hours after transplant with B6-WT BM and unseparated lymph node cells (1.2×10⁶ T cells). (B) Gating strategy, frequency and total cell number of recipient APCs in spleens of BALB/c-WT or STING^−/− recipients 24 hours after transplant as in (A). (C) H-2K^d median fluorescence intensity on recipient APCs in spleens of BALB/c-WT or STING^−/− recipients 24 hours after transplant as in (A) and gated as in (B). (D) Gating strategy, frequency and total cell number of donor CD8⁺ T cells in spleens of BALB/c-WT or STING^−/− recipients 24 hours after transplant as in (A). (E and F) Gating strategy, frequency and total cell number of donor CD8⁺ T cells producing (E) IFNγ or (F) TNFα in spleens of BALB/c-WT or STING^−/− recipients 24 hours after transplant as in (A). Data pooled: 2 experiments (n=7 for WT BM Only, n=4 for STING^−/− BM Only, n=10 each for WT BM+T and STING^−/− BM+T). (G) Gating strategy, frequency and total cell number of donor CD4⁺FoxP3⁻ T cells expressing Nur77^GFP, CD69, and IFNγ in spleens of BALB/c-WT or STING^−/− recipients 6 days after transplant with B6-CD45.1 BM and B6-Nur77^GFPFoxP3^RFP unseparated lymph node cells (1.2×10⁶ T cells). Data pooled: 2 experiments (n=9 for WT BM+T and n=8 for STING^−/− BM+T). GVHD or BM Only groups compared using two-tailed unpaired t test. * p<0.05, ** p<0.01, *** p<0.001. Data are means ± SEM.