Polyfunctional vaccine specific T cells recruited to the lungs after infection.

<p>Mice immunized as described in the experiment shown in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0039909#pone-0039909-g001" target="_blank">figure 1</a> were infected by the aerosol route with virulent M.tb Erdman seven weeks after the last H4-IC31® booster immunization. Six weeks after infection lung lymphocytes from three pools consisting of two half lungs per pool were used from each group for intracellular cytokine analysis by flow cytometry. Cells were stimulated with the indicated antigens derived from H4 (Ag85B and TB10.4; A) or ESAT-6 (B) as specified in the graph. Bars represent the proportions of lung CD4 T cell subsets producing different cytokines in response to stimulation as indicated on the X-axis. Background levels obtained in media-stimulated samples has been deducted. *, p<0.05, **, p<0.01, ***, p<0.001, proportion of cytokine producing CD4 T cells subsets compared to non-vaccinated controls using one-way ANOVA and Tukey’s post-test for multiple comparisons. This experiment was repeated once with similar results.