Interview with Dr. Stephen J. McSorley and Ms. Aparna Srinivasan regarding Pivotal Advance: Secondary exposure to LPS suppresses CD4 T cells and exacerbates murine typhoid

In this Pivotal Advance manuscript, the authors address the “paradox of Salmonella immunity and immunosuppression, ” a term coined to describe the observation that mitogen-unrespon-sive spleen cells were recovered from mice that had generated immunity to Salmonella [1]. In this work, Ms. Srinivasan and Dr. McSorley use adoptive transfer technology to demonstrate that immunosuppression is also an in vivo phenomenon and is not limited to CD4 T cells with specificity for Salmonella antigens. Specifically, the authors show that CD4 T cells (either flagellin-specific or OVA-specific) introduced into Salmonella-infected mice and subsequently activated in vivo by co-injection of respective peptide and endotoxin have only a limited ability to respond by producing IL-2 or TNF-. This is quite an interesting observation. Do yo