Up-regulation of CCR5 and CCR6 on distinct subpopulations of antigen-activated CD4⁺ T lymphocytes

Abstract

Following infection, naive T cells are activated in the secondary lymphoid tissue, but then need to move to the infected tissue in the periphery to mediate their effector functions. The acquisition of inflammatory chemokine receptors, such as CCR5 and CCR6, may contribute to the efficient relocation of activated T cells to inflamed sites in the periphery. In keeping with this idea, the present study has demonstrated that CCR5 and CCR6 are up-regulated on CD4+ T cells upon activation in the MLR. The observed increase in expression correlated well with the acquisition of an activated/memory phenotype and was largely (CCR5) or completely (CCR6) separated temporally from the initiation of cell division. In contrast, the regulation of two other chemokine receptors, CXCR3 and CXCR4, occurred in close parallel with the cell division process. Increased mRNA levels are likely to contribute to the enhanced surface expression of CCR5 and CCR6, but in the case of CCR6, translocation of intracellular stores of protein to the cell surface may be an additional mechanism of regulation. The up-regulation of CCR5 was more extensive than that of CCR6, as only approximately half the activated CCR5+ T cells coexpressed CCR6. The increased expression of CCR5 resulted in enhanced chemotaxis toward the CCR5 ligand macrophage-inflammatory protein-1/CCL4, but up-regulation of CCR6 did not result in altered chemotactic responsiveness to macrophage-inflammatory protein-3/CCL20, suggesting an alternative function for this receptor.