Aging restricts maturation of CXCL13 <sup>+</sup> T follicular helper cells in human immunity
GC-Tfh cells accompanied by accumulation of Tfh precursor states. Trajectory analysis showed that aging arrests Tfh cell maturation at the early activated precursor transition, and CRISPR perturbations identified BACH2 and SOX4 as transcriptional regulators of differentiation reduced with age. These findings reveal a human-specific mechanism of immune aging with implications for strategies to restore humoral immunity.
Authors
- A. Ben Barak
- Vamsee Mallajosyula (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0658-3652)
- Tatjana Bilich (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8107-0419)
- Nathan A. Bracey (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7938-1691)
- Mark Davis (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4075-0466)
- Adrienne H. Long (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1523-9095)
- L.A. Kamalyan
- Shai S. Shen-Orr (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6991-7736)
- Elsa Pérez Sola
- Casey Beppler (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9241-2413)
- Azam Mohsin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0021-3244)
- Robson Capasso (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2645-1793)
- Timothy J Few-Cooper
- Vishnu Shankar
Institutions
- University of Calgary (CA)
- Technion – Israel Institute of Technology (IL)
- Stanford University (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
- Published
- 2026-04-07
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.04.03.715992
- Primary Topic
- T-cell and B-cell Immunology
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- Israel Science Foundation