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Immunological Enhancement, Blocking Factors, and Tolerance to Tumours, Transplants and Foetuses
Author(s) -
Halliday W. J.
Publication year - 1972
Publication title -
australian and new zealand journal of medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.596
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1445-5994
pISSN - 0004-8291
DOI - 10.1111/j.1445-5994.1972.tb03948.x
Subject(s) - cytotoxic t cell , antigen , immunology , immunity , fetus , medicine , immunization , blocking antibody , blocking (statistics) , antibody , biology , immune system , pregnancy , in vitro , biochemistry , statistics , genetics , mathematics
Summary: Immunological nonreactivity (“tolerance”) as manifested towards progressing tumours, successful trans‐plants and the developing foetus, may be accomplished through blocking factors containing the appropriate antigen in combination with specific antibody. These factors interfere with the lymphocyte‐mediated cytotoxic immunity developed simultaneously against the growing “foreign” cells. It is postulated that a balanced situation is achieved by the establishment of conditions for moderate immunological responses towards antigens which must be continually synthesized and released. The successful initiation of primary tumours, pregnancy and most allogeneic trans‐plants requires immunologically de‐pressed or immature hosts; normally competent hosts will tolerate weakly antigenic cells (syngeneic tumours and some allogeneic transplants) only if the number of cells is large. In this way, the formation of antigen‐containing blocking factors keeps pace with the development of cytotoxic immunity, resulting in immunological enhancement of the invading cells.