Kaparakis-Liaskos, MariaTate, Michelle D.Price, Jason D.Pearse, MartinWijburg, Odilia L. C.2015-10-282015-10-281932-6203http://hdl.handle.net/1885/16148Cholera toxin (CT) is a mucosal adjuvant capable of inducing strong immune responses to co-administered antigens following oral or intranasal immunization of mice. To date, the direct effect of CT on antigen-specific CD4(+) T cell migration and proliferation profiles in vivo is not well characterized. In this study, the effect of CT on the migration pattern and proliferative responses of adoptively transferred, CD4(+) TCR transgenic T cells in orally or intranasally vaccinated mice, was analyzed by flow cytometry. GFP-expressing or CFSE-labeled OT-II lymphocytes were adoptively transferred to naïve C57BL/6 mice, and mice were subsequently vaccinated with OVA with or without CT via the oral or intranasal route. CT did not alter the migration pattern of antigen-specific T cells, regardless of the route of immunization, but increased the number of transgenic CD4(+) T cells in draining lymphoid tissue. This increase in the number of transgenic CD4(+) T cells was not due to cells undergoing more rounds of cellular division in vivo, suggesting that CT may exert an indirect adjuvant effect on CD4(+) T cells. The findings reported here suggest that CT functions as a mucosal adjuvant by increasing the number of antigen specific CD4(+) T cells independent of their migration pattern or kinetics of cellular division.Grant support was received from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (NHMRC). OLW is a recipient of an R.D. Wright Career Development Award.11 pages© 2013 Kaparakis-Liaskos et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.administration, intranasaladministration, oralanimalscd4-positive t-lymphocytescell divisioncell movementcell proliferationcholera toxindendritic cellsepitopesevans bluefluoresceinsgreen fluorescent proteinshistocompatibility antigens class iikineticslymphocyte countmicemice, inbred c57blmice, transgenicmucous membraneovalbuminpeptidessuccinimides2013-03-2710.1371/journal.pone.00599342015-12-10