Commitment to Lymphokine Profile During Primary In Vitro Stimulation

We have shown previously that different conditions in primary in vitro SEB stimulation of resting CD4+ T cells, could induce selectively production of either IFNγ or IL4 and IL10. The present investigation shows that the priming conditions also decide which lymphokines will be produced during restimulations. The cells that had been induced to produce mainly IFNγ during the primary SEB stimulation, or during stimulation with IL4and ILIO, synthesized the same lymphokines at restimulation, regardless of stimuli and were unaffected by exogenous IL4. Thus, at an early stage of primary SEB stimulation, cells became committed to produce a certain pattern of lymphokines which remained throughout the period of in vitro culture testing.