Cells. 2026 Aug 24;15(17):1519. doi: 10.3390/cells15171519.
ABSTRACT
Cardiovascular diseases are increasingly recognized as immune-inflammatory disorders in which adaptive immunity shapes tissue injury, repair, and long-term remodeling. T cells are central to these processes because they integrate antigen recognition, lineage-defining transcriptional programs, tissue trafficking, cytokine production, and immunological memory. In this Review, we synthesize current evidence on the Krüppel-like factor (KLF) family as a transcriptional framework linking T-cell biology to cardiovascular disease. KLF2 primarily regulates T-cell quiescence and trafficking, KLF10 supports regulatory T-cell suppressive function and immune-metabolic fitness, KLF4 contributes to inflammatory effector differentiation, and KLF13 regulates delayed inflammatory chemokine expression and, in thymocyte models, exerts a survival-restraining effect through apoptosis-related pathways. Across atherosclerosis, myocardial infarction, myocarditis, hypertension, and heart failure, these KLF-dependent programs may influence the balance between pathogenic effector responses and protective regulatory mechanisms. The strongest direct disease-specific evidence currently supports a role for KLF10 within the CD4+ T-cell lineage in experimental atherosclerosis, with complementary functional evidence implicating Treg-macrophage interactions, whereas the roles of KLF-dependent T-cell programs in other cardiovascular settings remain mechanistically compelling but less fully validated. Future progress will require disease-specific T-cell-restricted models, spatially resolved immune analyses, and cell-selective translational strategies to define the therapeutic relevance of the KLF-T-cell axis.
PMID:42738814 | PMC:PMC13564580 | DOI:10.3390/cells15171519