CD69 down-modulation and inhibition of thymic egress by short- and long-term selective chemical agonism of sphingosine 1-phosphate receptors

Thymic development requires proliferation, selection, maturation and release of mature single-positive CD4 and CD8 T cells into the periphery. In mice, non-selective sphingosine-1 phosphate (SIP) receptor agonists, active on four of the five known SIP receptors, alter thymocyte phenotype and egress. Here, we show that down-modulation of CD69 occurs acutely and transiently at a discrete and late stage of medullary development after a single-dose administration of SIP, receptor-selective agonist, which induces long-term tonic receptor activation in the absence of receptor degradation. In addition, agonist acutely inhibited egress of mature thymocytes into peripheral lymphoid organs, suggesting that both the phenotype and migration of medullary thymocytes are regulated simultaneously and coordinately by agonism of SIP, alone. Long-term dosing shifted the early/late medullary thymocyte ratio with an expansion of the late medullary compartment, as mature CD69(-) thymocytes were retained within the thymus. Therefore, chemical agonism of SIP, accelerates medullary phenotypic maturation and inhibits egress, leading to the expansion and accumulation of the recent thymocyte emigrant population in the medulla. However, chemical agonism fails to replicate the S1P(1)-null CD69(hi) late medullary phenotype, suggesting that agonism and gene deletion operate by distinct mechanisms, and that functional receptor antagonism may not be required for lymphocyte sequestration.