Contrasting effects of FLIPL overexpression in human T cells on activation-induced cell death and cytokine production

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

There have been disparate findings about the role of FLIP in the survival of mouse T cells and human tumor cell lines. The role of cellular FLIP in human T cell activation and function needs to be clarified further. To study this role, we have overexpressed long transcript FLIP (FLIPL) in primary T cells, including self-antigen-reactive, melanoma-specific T cells. We found that FLIPL overexpression protects human T cells from activation-induced cell death and enhances their proliferative capacity but suppresses the ability of these cells to produce the proinflammatory cytokines IL-2 and IFN-gamma in response to CD3 or antigen-specific stimulation. The multiple effects of FLIPL indicate that this protein may influence T cell responses to antigenic stimulation.