{"doi":"10.64898/2025.12.30.697014","title":"Impact of Absent in Melanoma 2 (AIM2) on Antigen-Specific CD4+ T cell Activation and Homeostasis","abstract":"The intrinsic role of Absent in Melanoma 2 (AIM2) in CD4 + T cells during antigen-specific activation and differentiation is not fully understood. To address this, we crossed AIM2-deficient mice with OT-II/RAG transgenic mice, which express an ovalbumin-specific T cell receptor in CD4 + T cells (OT-II). We found that AIM2 does not regulate thymic selection of CD4 + thymocytes, but may promote trafficking or survivability of CD4 + T cells in the spleen. In vitro coculture assays revealed that Aim2 -/- OT-II CD4 + T cells produce significantly less IL-2 than wild type OT-II CD4 + T cells when cocultured with ovalbumin-incubated dendritic cells. However, we found no differences in CD4 + T cell proliferative capacity and differentiation among WT OT-II and Aim2 -/- OT-II CD4 + T cells following OVA immunization in vivo. Finally, adoptively transferred WT and Aim2 -/- OT-II cells controlled the growth of implanted OVA-expressing NOOC2 syngeneic tumors at an equal capacity. Taken together, these results indicate that AIM2 contributes to CD4 + T cell homeostasis in secondary lymphoid organs in vivo. AIM2 also intrinsically promotes IL-2 production in response to antigen-specific activation in vitro. However, this loss of IL-2 does not translate to measurable defects in proliferative, differentiation or effector function during OVA immunization or tumor challenge in vivo.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2025,"id":587526,"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":0.9584,"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":1503521,"name":"Chloe Sairs","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":663381,"name":"Wang Gong","orcid":"0000-0002-2116-3453","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1275639,"name":"Lei Ye","orcid":"0000-0001-5039-6224","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":461472,"name":"Michael S. Kuhns","orcid":"0000-0002-0403-6313","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":531436,"name":"Justin E. Wilson","orcid":"0000-0002-2803-3280","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":262618,"name":"Dakota M. Reinartz","orcid":"0000-0002-7221-4329","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":37,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:59:39.958043Z","pmid":"41509308","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":[]}