Thymic epithelial cell lines that mediate positive selection can also induce thymocyte clonal deletion

Abstract

Negative selection of potentially autoreactive thymocytes occurs mainly in the thymus and is thought to be induced primarily by interaction with bone marrow-derived cells. However, some studies have also reported a role for radioresistant thymic cells, which are probably epithelial in origin, in the deletion of thymocytes reacting to endogenous superantigens. We have previously demonstrated that thymic epithelial cell lines could induce thymocyte-positive selection in vivo. In this study, we assessed the potential of these cells to delete thymocytes reacting to the staphyloccocal enterotoxin A or B superantigens in vitro. In the presence of staphyloccocal enterotoxin A or B we found that all..