Positive and negative regulation of IL-12 receptor expression of naive CD4+ T cells by CD28/CD152 co-stimulation

IL-72 is a critical cytokine for polarizing naive CD4(+) T cells toward Th1 subset. Therefore, it is important to elucidate the mechanism of IL-12R expression of naive CD4(+) T cells. In this report, we present evidence to show that expression of both IL-12R beta1 and beta2 mRNA is regulated by signals mediated through CD28 and CD152. Naive CD4(+) T cells stimulated with anti-CD3 alone neither expressed IL-12R beta2 mRNA nor bound detectable level of rIL-12, although they expressed a very low level of IL-12R beta1 mRNA when stimulated with a high dose of anti-CD3. Expression of IL-12R beta1 and beta2 mRNA was induced by the co-ligation of CD3 and CD28, and it was down-regulated by the ligation of CD152. CD28 ligation induced not only IL-12R beta1 and beta2 mRNA expression, but also enhanced IFN-gammaR to mediate upregulation of IL-12R by IFN-gamma.