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Lymph nodes link sex-biased immune aging to compromised antigen recognition

Menzel, L.; Zschummel, M.; O'Melia, M. J.; Zhou, H.; Lei, P.-J.; Liu, L.; Sen, D. R.; Munn, L. L.; Padera, T. P.

2025-02-15 immunology
10.1101/2025.02.11.637693 bioRxiv
Show abstract

The numerical abundance of diverse naive CD8 T cell clones is essential to provide broad protection against infection and cancer. Here, we uncover a sex-biased mechanism of immune aging in which age-related thymic involution limits naive CD8 T cell supply, while male mice exhibit an additional early depletion of naive CD8 T cells driven by accelerated, antigen-agnostic differentiation into virtual memory cells. This combined loss leads to contraction of lymph nodes and reduced local naive T cell clone availability, limiting antigen recognition capacity. Therapeutic thymus regeneration via androgen ablation repopulates naive CD8 T cells in lymph nodes and reinvigorates tumor recognition in middle-aged male mice. These findings reveal the crucial impact of sex and age on locoregional naive T cell clone abundance in lymph nodes and suggest strategies to restore immune competence in aging males.

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