CD4
+ T cells or CD8
+ T cells were purified from PBMCs using magnetic positive selection with biotin human anti-CD4 or anti- CD8 antibodies, respectively, followed by incubation with streptavidin-coupled magnetic microbeads (BioLegend) and positive selection with magnets. Purity was assessed by flow cytometry on a
BD LSRFortessa using anti-CD4 (RPA-T4, 1:400) antibodies and anti-CD8 (RPA-T8, 1:400) antibodies. Cells were plated on 48-well plates, coated with anti-CD3 (1 μg ml
−1) and anti-CD28 (10 μg ml ) antibodies, in RPMI medium or DMEM, supplemented with 10% FCS, penicillin, streptomycin, HEPES, glutamine, pyruvate, nonessential amino acids and β-mercaptoethanol diluted with PBS (1:1), in the presence of
IL-2 (10 ng ml
−1, Peprotech) and
IL-12 (10 ng ml
−1, Peprotech) (T
H1 conditions), with or without amino acids. Human CD4
+ T cell cultures were supplemented on days 0, 1 and 2 with 5 mM NaCl or 5 mM BHB and collected after 6 days of culture. Cultured cells were stimulated for 6 h with
PMA (50 ng ml
−1) (BioGems) and
ionomycin (1 µg ml
−1) (BioGems) in the presence of brefeldin A (1 μg ml
−1) (
GolgiPlug, BD Biosciences), stained for viability (
Zombie UV Fixable Viability Dye (BioLegend)) and surface markers, fixed and permeabilized with 3.7%
formaldehyde (Sigma) and 0.1% NP-40, respectively, and stained for intracellular cytokines.
Karagiannis F., Peukert K., Surace L., Michla M., Nikolka F., Fox M., Weiss P., Feuerborn C., Maier P., Schulz S., Al B., Seeliger B., Welte T., David S., Grondman I., de Nooijer A.H., Pickkers P., Kleiner J.L., Berger M.M., Brenner T., Putensen C., Kato H., Garbi N., Netea M.G., Hiller K., Placek K., Bode C, & Wilhelm C. (2022). Impaired ketogenesis ties metabolism to T cell dysfunction in COVID-19. Nature, 609(7928), 801-807.