Figure 4

Quantitation of absolute numbers of pmel CD8⁺ T cells. Pooled blood from mice in the vaccine control and all three cytokine experimental groups (≥ 5 mice/group) was analyzed by flow cytometry to determine the absolute number of circulating pmel-1 CD8⁺ T cells/μL of blood. Vaccinated mice treated with IL-21+ IL-2 had the highest total pmel CD8⁺ cell numbers at all time points. Data are shown from a representative experiment and show that IL-21 + IL-2 resulted in significantly higher circulating pmel CD8⁺ T cell numbers than was produced by IL-2 (p = 0.05), or IL-21 (p = 0.05) alone.