Does CXCR 3 chemokine receptor expression by CD 8 T cells affect their moving towards or only their binding to virus - infected monocytes ?

This correspondence concerns a recent publication in by Hickman Immunity et who analyzed the effect of knockout on migration of CD8 T cells al. Cxcr3 towards and within vaccinia virus-infected mouse ears. They found that Cxcr3 knockout had no effect on CD8 T cell migration into the infected ears, a relatively mild effect on virus clearance, and an effect on the contact of CD8 T cells with virus-infected cells. Curiously, despite having these basically sound and interesting data, Hickman exaggerated the effect on virus clearance et al. (“dramatically impaired virus clearance”) and focused their conclusions on assumed differences in migration towards infected cells (“CXCR3 chemokine receptor enables local CD8 T cell migration”) rather than on better proven differences in binding to infected cells. I believe that from the data presented by Hickman on the effect of knockout a migration effect et al. Cxcr3 independent from the binding effect cannot be concluded beyond discussion. The fact that CXCR3 is a chemokine receptor, and that most researchers consequently expect a chemokine-gradient-dependent migration effect of the knockout mutation, increases the risk of misleading readers when Cxcr3 approached through the Hickman narrative. The here-initiated discussion et al. of their article may help to avoid such a misleading. Johannes M. Dijkstra ( ) Corresponding author: [email protected] Dijkstra JM. How to cite this article: Does CXCR3 chemokine receptor expression by CD8 T cells affect their moving towards or only 2015, :922 (doi: their binding to virus-infected monocytes? [version 1; referees: 1 approved with reservations] F1000Research 4 ) 10.12688/f1000research.7110.1 © 2015 Dijkstra JM. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the , which Copyright: Creative Commons Attribution Licence permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The author(s) declared that no grants were involved in supporting this work. Grant information: Competing interests: The authors declared no competing interests. 29 Sep 2015, :922 (doi: ) First published: 4 10.12688/f1000research.7110.1 +