Figure 7.

Abundance of DCs and antigen determines Treg versus Th17 response in vivo

(A) Experimental setup of the immunization protocol with different numbers of DCs.

(B) OT2 CD4 response to antigen was evaluated by measuring the expression of the CD44 activation marker as a function of the dose of OVAp-loaded DCs. Bar graphs show the means ± SEMs (n = 3 mice per condition; unpaired 2-tailed Student’s t test; ^∗∗p < 0.01).

(C) Two-color contour plots showing percentages of Foxp3⁺CD25⁺ Treg cells and IL-17A⁺CCR6⁺ Th17 cells within the CD45.2⁺CD4⁺ OT2 cell population in the function of the dose of DC APCs. Bar plots show the means ± SEMs (n = 3 mice per condition; unpaired 2-tailed Student’s t test; ^∗p < 0.05; ^∗∗∗p < 0.001).

(D) Experimental setup of intraperitoneal (i.p.) infection with increasing number of plaque-forming units (PFUs) of MVA-OVA.

(E) CD8 T cell response to the virus was evaluated by measuring the percentage of I-A^b-OVAp tetramer⁺ cells within the CD8⁺ T cell population. Graph shows the means ± SEMs (n = 2–4 mice per condition; unpaired 2-tailed Student’s t test; ^∗∗p < 0.01).

(F) Quantification of the percentage of Foxp3⁺CD25⁺ Treg and IL-17A⁺CCR6⁺ Th17 within the splenic endogenous CD4 T cell population. Graphs show the means ± SEMs (n = 2–4 mice per condition; unpaired 2-tailed Student’s t test; ^∗p < 0.05; ^∗∗p < 0.01; ^∗∗∗p < 0.001).