Impact of inflammatory cytokines on effector and memory CD8+T cells

Inflammatory cytokines have long been recognized to produce potent APCs to elicit robust T cell responses for protective immunity. The impact of inflammatory cytokine signaling directly on T cells, however, has only recently been appreciated. Although much remains to be learned, the CD8T cell field has made considerable strides in understanding the effects of inflammatory cytokines throughout the CD8T cell response. Key findings first identified 11,12 and type I interferons as "signal 3" cytokines, emphasizing their importance in generating optimal CD8T cell responses. Separate investigations revealed another inflammatory cytokine, 11,15, to play a critical role in memory CD8 T cell maintenance. These early studies highlighted potential regulators of CD8 T cells, but were unable to provide mechanistic insight into how these inflammatory cytokines enhanced CD8 T cell-mediated immunity. Here, we describe the mechanistic advances that have been made in our lab regarding the role of "signal 3" cytokines and IL-15 in optimizing effector and memory CD8 T cell number and function. Furthermore, we assess initial progress on the role of cytokines, such as TGF-beta, in generation of recently described resident memory CD8 T cell populations.