{"doi":"10.1167/iovs.66.15.2","title":"Corneal Myofibroblasts Suppress T-Cell Immunity in Corneal Transplantation","abstract":"Purpose: To evaluate the immunoregulatory effect of corneal myofibroblasts on effector T cells derived from allogeneic corneal transplant recipient mice. Methods: Allo-primed CD4+CD25- effector T cells isolated from the draining lymph nodes of corneal transplant recipient mice were cocultured with corneal myofibroblasts or corneal fibroblasts. Flow cytometry was used to measure effector T-cell activation and function by expression of CD69, CD40L, and IFN-γ. Flow cytometry was also used to quantify T-cell apoptosis and T-cell proliferation upon coculture with corneal myofibroblasts. Results: Coculturing effector T cells with corneal myofibroblasts led to a significant decrease in effector T-cell activation as assessed by T-cell expression of CD69 (5520 ± 373 vs. 1701 ± 140) and CD40L (127.50 ± 4.17 vs. 42.87 ± 2.63) mean fluorescence intensity; this suppression was not seen with corneal fibroblasts. Coculture of T cells with myofibroblasts additionally led to a significant reduction in the frequency of IFN-γ+ effector T cells compared to coculture with fibroblasts (2.94% ± 0.85% vs. 0.65% ± 0.23%). Finally, compared to fibroblasts, coculture with myofibroblasts led to a significant increase in the frequency of apoptotic effector T cells (14.78% ± 3.67% vs. 32.48% ± 5.43%) and a significant reduction in T-cell proliferation (61.60% ± 2.68% vs. 39.63% ± 0.92%). Conclusions: Myofibroblasts are capable of suppressing T-cell immunity through suppression of effector T-cell proliferation, activation, and function, as well as the promotion of T-cell apoptosis. Our data suggest that in addition to their well-established role in extracellular matrix production, myofibroblasts may also actively participate in immunoregulation.","journal":"Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science","year":2025,"id":583727,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9659,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1282820,"name":"Antonio Esquivel Herrera","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":474425,"name":"Elsayed Elbasiony","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1118404,"name":"Seok-Joo Lee","orcid":"0009-0003-7317-2583","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":450681,"name":"Sharad K. Mittal","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1106960,"name":"Shima Dehghani","orcid":"0000-0002-5213-0080","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1106962,"name":"Akitomo Narimatsu","orcid":"0000-0002-0073-3162","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":723185,"name":"Hamid Alemi","orcid":"0000-0001-8516-9574","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":393255,"name":"Sunil K. Chauhan","orcid":"0000-0003-4938-6023","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":230209,"name":"Reza Dana","orcid":"0000-0002-5732-5100","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":400621,"name":"Thomas H. Dohlman","orcid":"0000-0002-3818-4541","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":660057,"name":"Shudan Wang","orcid":"0000-0002-9292-0992","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":30,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:59:07.970345Z","pmid":"41324326","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}