Binding of cortical thymocytes to a medullary epithelial cell line: a brief review.

In this review, we bring together data regarding complexes formed between thymocytes and a line of thymic epithelial cells, E-5. We show that E-5 has all the markers which identify it as of epithelial and medullary origin. We show that thymocytes which form complexes with it belong to the double positive, CD4+CD8+ population, and that the receptor responsible for binding to epithelial cells is likely to be an as yet unidentified glycoprotein