Large scale preparation of human MHC class II+ integrin beta(1)+ Tregs.

Abstract The human CD4 + CD25 + FoxP3 + regulatory T cell population (Tregs) contains both MHC class II + and MHC class II − cells. MHC class II + Tregs belong to the integrin α 4 β 1 + subpopulation and exclusively execute contact-dependent suppressive activity. Here we present a method optimized for isolation of these MHC class II expressing Tregs from large leukaphereses products using magnetic microbeads that achieves a reproducible purity of more than 90% and enables the use of this small-sized Treg population in pre-clinical application and basic research.