Open AccessSuppressed alloreactivity and mixed chimerism in rats with accepted cardiac allografts by intrathymic injection of donor bone marrow cells
Author(s) -
Matsuura T.,
Imanishi M.,
Hara Y.,
Nishioka T.,
Kunikata S.,
Akiyama T.,
Kurita T.
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
transplant international
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.998
H-Index - 82
eISSN - 1432-2277
pISSN - 0934-0874
DOI - 10.1111/j.1432-2277.1997.tb00702.x
Subject(s) - medicine , mixed lymphocyte reaction , immunosuppression , bone marrow , spleen , immunology , heart transplantation , immune tolerance , t lymphocyte , lymphocyte , transplantation , andrology , immune system , t cell
. Intrathymic injection of donor bone marrow cells (ITBMCs) at the time of transplantation and treatment with antilymphocyte serum (ALS) permitted the indefinite survival of Brown Norway (BN, RTl n ) rat heart grafts in 6 out of 8 Lewis (LEW, RT1 1 ) rat recipients. LEW recipients with long‐surviving BN heart grafts (LSGs) also accepted additional BN heart grafts without further immunosuppression, though they rejected Piebald Virol Glaxo (PVG, RT1 C ) rat heart grafts in the usual fashion. In the in vitro study, the proliferative response of the lymphocytes from LEW recipients with LSGs remained suppressed when they were stimulated by BN spleen cells, but not when stimulated by PVG cells. Bone marrow cells (BMCs) from LEW rats with LSGs showed strong, nonspecific, suppressive effects on the proliferative response in the mixed lymphocyte culture reaction, suggesting that one of the possible explanations for tolerance might be the involvement of a suppressor mechanism.