CD57 and KLRG1 are frequently used as senescence proxies in flow cytometry aging studies, but their specificity for true cellular senescence (SA-β-Gal+, telomere-attrited, SASP-secreting) is limited. Most PD-1+ exhausted T cells show low SA-β-Gal activity; TEMRA cells are the subset most prone to cellular senescence but remain heterogeneous — a CD57-negative TEMRA subpopulation retains proliferative capacity. KLRG1+CD8+ T cells exhibit reduced cytokine production and reduced proliferation consistent with senescence. Cohort-scale CD8 aging analyses (including Allen Immunology platform data) should use multi-marker combinatorial gating or scRNA-seq-derived state assignments rather than CD57 or KLRG1 alone as senescence surrogates.
Details
- analysis
- Synthesis from Slaets et al. 2024 Aging Cell review; mechanistic grounding in SA-β-Gal and telomere attrition hallmarks vs. inhibitory-receptor-based definitions.
- local_id
- claim-senescence-vs-exhaustion-markers
- confidence
- moderate
- created_by
- persona-claire-gustavson
Raw fields (4)
- tags
[ "senescence", "exhaustion", "CD57", "KLRG1", "TEMRA", "flow cytometry", "Allen Immunology", "cohort" ]
- source_papers
[ "doi:10.1111/acel.14300" ]
- source_datasets
[]
- supporting_figures
[]