Thymic dendritic cells traffic to thymi of allogeneic recipients and prolong graft survival
Steven R. Duncan, … , Brian R. Lawson, Argyrios N. Theofilopoulos
Steven R. Duncan, … , Brian R. Lawson, Argyrios N. Theofilopoulos
Published March 15, 2002
Citation Information: J Clin Invest. 2002;109(6):755-764. https://doi.org/10.1172/JCI12142.
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Article

Thymic dendritic cells traffic to thymi of allogeneic recipients and prolong graft survival

Abstract

We have demonstrated that murine thymic dendritic cells (DCs) isolated from donor mice have the capability to home to thymi of fully allogeneic recipients after intravenous injections, where they induce T cell deletions and prolong donor-strain airway and skin graft survival. In contrast, infused splenic DCs immigrated poorly to thymi, and did not affect graft survival. These findings suggest that preferential homing may be an important mechanistic difference among subpopulations of DCs that mediate immune functions and illustrate a novel methodology that could have utility for induction of specific immunologic nonreactivity to allografts, or other disease-associated antigens.

Authors

Steven R. Duncan, Nickolas G. Capetanakis, Brian R. Lawson, Argyrios N. Theofilopoulos

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(a) Histology scores of airway allografts harvested 6 weeks after transp...
(a) Histology scores of airway allografts harvested 6 weeks after transplantation using the donor/recipient strain combinations described in Figure 2. Mean values are depicted by horizontal bars. TDC scores were significantly lower than those of other groups. (b) Skin allograft survival is prolonged by intravenous injections of TDCs. In these experiments, (B6 × SJL)F1 tail skin was grafted onto B6 recipients (c). 3H-thymidine incorporation of HAG recipient (BALB.B) splenocytes cocultured with irradiated allogeneic BALB/c donor cells or syngeneic BALB.B controls (pooled data of replicate trials). No proliferation was observed in animals treated with TDCs (n = 7), in contrast with values of animals treated with SDCs (n = 6) and values of control animals (no cell injections) (n = 8). (d) Stimulatory effect of BALB/c DCs in cocultures with naive allogeneic (BALB.B) splenocytes. Results shown are 3H-thymidine cpm of cocultures minus baseline cpm (no allogeneic DCs), with results pooled from replicate trials (n = 13 in each DC group).