We have confirmed this finding and also demonstrated that CD4+ cells induced by a combination of atRA and TGF-β displayed superior suppressive function in vitro and adoptive transfer of these cells resulted in much better suppressive effects on lupus disease development in animal model compared to CD4+ cells treated with TGF-β alone, implicating that a combination of atRA and TGF-β provides an ideal protocol for the preparation of iTreg population and their use in the clinical cell therapy in treating autoimmune disease and organ transplantation settings. This evidence concerns the gene CD4 and autoimmune disease.