Thymic vasculature: organizer of the medullary epithelial compartment?

Epithelial Differentiation Implications for Programs of Thymic Compartment in the Aire-Deficient Thymus: Alterations of the Medullary Epithelial

Three-dimensional visualization of the mouse thymus organization in health and immunodeficiency.

Lymphoid organs exhibit complex structures tightly related to their function. Surprisingly, although the thymic medulla constitutes a specialized microenvironment dedicated to the induction of T cell tolerance, its three-dimensional topology remains largely elusive because it has been studied mainly in two dimensions using thymic sections. To overcome this limitation, we have developed an autom...

Stat3 Signaling Promotes Survival And Maintenance Of Medullary Thymic Epithelial Cells

Medullary thymic epithelial cells (mTECs) are essential for establishing central tolerance by expressing a diverse array of self-peptides that delete autoreactive thymocytes and/or divert thymocytes into the regulatory T cell lineage. Activation of the NFκB signaling pathway in mTEC precursors is indispensable for mTEC maturation and proliferation resulting in proper medullary region formation....

Argyrophilic nucleolar organizer regions in cells of thymoma and thymic carcinoma: correlation with DNA ploidy and clinicopathologic characteristics.

STUDY OBJECTIVES To evaluate the usefulness of argyrophilic nucleolar organizer region (AgNOR) counting and flow cytometric DNA analysis in the differential diagnosis of thymoma and thymic carcinoma, as well as in the differences among various stages and histologic subtypes of these tumors. DESIGN AND INTERVENTIONS Paraffin-embedded blocks of 64 thymic epithelial tumors (20 noninvasive thymom...

Dynamic spatio‐temporal contribution of single β5t+ cortical epithelial precursors to the thymus medulla

Intrathymic T-cell development is critically dependent on cortical and medullary thymic epithelial cells (TECs). Both epithelial subsets originate during early thymus organogenesis from progenitor cells that express the thymoproteasome subunit β5t, a typical feature of cortical TECs. Using in vivo lineage fate mapping, we demonstrate in mice that β5t(+) TEC progenitors give rise to the medullar...