ALBERT

Beschreibung: The capacity of CD4+CD25+Foxp3+ (Treg) cells to regulate adaptive and innate immune responses has led to studies investigating their application to regulate allogeneic T cell responses arising during hematopoietic stem cell transplants (HCT). With respect to HCT, a fundamental clinical concern is the reconstitution of the lymphoid compartment in recipients, particularly T cells since this process can be exceedingly delayed. We have previously found that host Treg cells can regulate resistance to engraftment following HCT, demonstrating that such cells survive and function at least transiently in recipients. The present studies investigated the residual host Treg compartment following HCT. Utilizing varying levels of total body irradiation (5.0 – 14Gy), we observed: recipient CD4+CD25+Foxp3+ cells can survive ablative as well as reduced intensity conditioning, the surviving, i.e. residual Treg cells undergo expansion as assessed by BrdU uptake and cell numbers, and these cells comprise the majority of the Treg compartment in recipients for several months post-HCT during which time donor derived Treg cells gradually arise and cede this compartment. Residual Tregs also dominated the compartment following allogeneic HCT of MHC-matched bone marrow depleted of T cells. To assess the functional capacity of the residual Treg cell compartment, the development of autoimmune disease following transplant of IL-2Rβ −/− (CD122−/−) bone marrow into syngeneic recipients with and without residual Tregs was examined. Autoimmune disease symptoms and T cell alterations were prevented in B6-wt but not T cell deficient recipients. Interestingly, the failure to transfer autoimmune disease following IL-2Rβ −/− HCT into lethally conditioned B6-CD4−/− recipients was associated with the presence of a peripheral CD8+FoxP3+ population not detected in B6-wt mice or the B6-wt mice transplanted with IL-2Rβ −/− BM. This finding indicates that in the genetic absence of CD4+ T cells, a CD8 regulatory population appears to emerge. In total, our observations support the notion that functioning host Tregs initially occupy a niche in the transplant recipient permitting lymphopenic expansion and an extended period of contribution to this compartment. Notably, this contribution reflected much greater levels than conventional T cell populations - even in aggressively conditioned recipients. Finally, these findings imply that the presence of host regulatory cells may be important to consider with respect to eliciting anti-tumor responses and vaccination in recipients during the early period post -hematopoietic cell transplantation.

Beschreibung: Early life exposure to noninherited maternal antigens (NIMAs) may occur via transplacental transfer and/or breast milk. There are indications that early life exposure to NIMAs may lead to lifelong tolerance. However, there is mounting evidence that exposure to NIMAs may also lead to immunologic priming. Understanding how these different responses arise could be critical in transplantation with donor cells expressing NIMAs. We recently reported that murine neonates that received a transplant of low doses of NIMA-like alloantigens develop vigorous memory cytotoxic responses, as assessed by in vitro assays. Here, we demonstrate that robust allospecific cytotoxicity is also manifest in vivo. Importantly, at low doses, NIMA-expressing cells induced the development of in vivo cytotoxicity during the neonatal period. NIMA-exposed neonates also developed vigorous primary and memory allospecific Th1/Th2 responses that exceeded the responses of adults. Overall, we conclude that exposure to low doses of NIMA-like alloantigens induces robust in vivo cytotoxic and Th1/Th2 responses in neonates. These findings suggest that early exposure to low levels of NIMA may lead to long-term immunologic priming of all arms of T-cell adaptive immunity, rather than tolerance.

Beschreibung: Clinical reports suggest significant sex differences in risk for thrombosis-related diseases such as myocardial infarction, stroke, and venous thromboembolism. However, little is known about mechanism for such differences. There is a well-described sexual dimorphism in liver protein synthesis that is growth hormone (GH) dependent. GH secretion from the pituitary is itself highly sexually dimorphic with males (M) secreting in a pulsatile (P) and females (F) a continuous (C) fashion. These patterns induce M- and F-specific signatures of liver gene expression. In the past, we and others have observed significant sex differences in murine thrombosis models. Given that most coagulation proteases and inhibitors are synthesized or modified in the liver, we aimed to test whether sex-specific GH secretion patterns contribute to the observed sex differences in thrombosis. We measured whole blood clotting times (WCT), thrombosis susceptibility in the thromboplastin-mediated pulmonary embolism (PE) model, and hemostasis in the tail bleeding time (BT) model in M and F control (WT) and GH-deficient “little” (LIT) mice. We observed that WT Fs had longer WCTs (mean time 61.38 vs. 56.72 sec) and were significantly protected in the PE model (median survival 232.5 vs 165 sec) as compared to M. There were no differences in the BT model across all experiments. Interestingly, F and M LIT animals both had significantly prolonged WCTs (67.56 and 67.30 sec, respectively) and were substantially protected in the PE model (median survival 900 and 1200 sec) as compared to WT. Next, LIT animals were injected twice daily with GH to simulate the P pattern of GH secretion (LIT+). This resulted in a significant shortening of the F and M WCTs back to WT M levels (53.16 and 50.97 sec). A group of F WT animals were also injected with M pattern GH (WT+). This too resulted in significant shortening of the F WCTs (54.10 sec). To explore for possible mechanisms underlying these differences, we measured activity of coagulation factors II, V, VII, VIII, IX, X, and XI. The average of all factor activity levels was significantly higher in WT M vs F (100 vs. 81.99%), significantly lower and in both M and F LIT (60.85 and 57.97%), and increased to WT M levels in M and F LIT+ animals (106.6 and 99%). To determine whether these changes were mediated by changes in liver gene expression, we measured a panel of 30 coagulation protease and inhibitor genes in liver and vascular tissue by Taqman®. Surprisingly, we found no significant differences in coagulation factor expression, but found that expression of TFPI was significantly increased in F vs M WT vasculature (9431 vs. 7678 gene copy number (GCN)). Expression was increased in M and F LIT animals (10350 and 11710 GCN) and fell to below WT levels in M and F LIT+ animals (4534 and 4194 GCN). These results indicate that sex differences in thrombosis in mice are at least in part mediated by sex differences in GH secretion with F mice relatively protected as compared to M. M and F GH-deficient LIT mice are similarly protected as compared to WT M. Repletion of GH in a P pattern reverts M and F LIT and F WT mice to WT M levels. Finally, P GH secretion may promote increased thrombosis through inhibition of TFPI in the vasculature. This represents a novel mechanism underlying these sex-differences in thrombosis mediated by sexually dimorphic GH secretion and its effect on regulation of TFPI in the vasculature.

Beschreibung: The role CD4+CD25+FoxP3+ (Treg) cells play in the establishment and maintenance of immune tolerance makes them attractive candidates for therapeutic prevention and treatment of autoimmune and transplant rejection responses. Autoimmune diseases have diverse pathologies/underlying effector mechanisms and how Treg cells control each disorder remains unclear. Granzyme B in murine and perforin in human Treg cells have been reported to be involved with suppression of proliferation and lysis of activated T cells, respectively. Perforin/fas-ligand double cytotoxic deficient (B6-cdd) mice develop a spontaneous lymphoproliferative disorder with selective tissue infiltration, principally in the pancreas and ovaries, together with weight loss and death by ~15 weeks of age (i.e. cdd syndrome). Uncontrolled expansion of the effector T cell pool is proposed to result as a consequence of cytotoxically impaired, activated T cells unable to lyse Ag-presenting monocytes and macrophages. Since CD4+CD25+FoxP3+ cells have the capacity to regulate lymphocyte proliferation, this compartment was examined in B6-cdd (H2b) mice. At 6–7 weeks of age-prior to complete onset of the syndrome-splenic CD4+CD25+ T cells are present and functionally suppressive in vitro. We were therefore interested in investigating their capacity to regulate auto and allo-reactive T cell responses in situ in the context of defined spontaneous autoimmune disease (IL2Rβ−/−)and GVHD (MHC Class I/II disparate) models. Purified CD4+CD25+ T cells isolated from B6-cdd mice were injected into B6-IL2Rβ−/− (CD122−/−) newborns and effectively prevented autoimmune disease assessed by hematocrit, absence of lymphoproliferation and clinical signs. B6-cdd Tregs were identified and collected several (~3) months post-injection from the rescued animals and found to exhibit functional suppression in vitro. Interestingly, identical results were obtained in allogeneic BALB/c (H2d) IL2Rβ−/− recipients. Purified CD4+CD25+ T cells isolated from B6-cdd or B6-wt mice were transplanted together with T cell replete B6 BMC into lethally irradiated, MHC-mismatched BALB/c recipients. B6-cdd Tregs were found to be comparable to B6-wt Tregs in their ability to prevent development of ac ute GVHD as assessed by weight loss, clinical signs and survival post-BMT. In total, these observations demonstrate that CD4+CD25+FoxP3+ Treg cells do not require the cytolytic effector molecules perforin and fas-ligand for in vitro suppression, in vivo regulation of a spontaneous (CD122−/−) autoimmune disease as well as for acute GVHD. Their inability to control autochthonous B6-cdd lymphoproliferative syndrome could ultimately be a result of death or dysregulation of Treg cells in these mice. Alternatively, distinct Treg effector molecules may be required to control different T cell responses associated with various autoimmune/non-self reactivity and ongoing experiments are investigating these possibilities.

Beschreibung: There is currently significant interest in the transplant field to develop adoptive-transfer strategies utilizing T cell populations to provide immediate immune function as well as long-term immune reconstitution following hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT). Presumably, these pre-selected T cell populations could then be further expanded in the transplant recipient as a consequence of lymphopenia-induced proliferation. However, clinical application of adoptive transfer strategies has been limited by practical (time, expense) and technical (isolation and expansion of antigen-specific T cell populations) difficulties, hence more efficient approaches need to be identified. Recent reports have demonstrated the feasibility for the rapid ex vivo generation of transgenic memory CD8 populations. We investigated the potential of applying this ex vivo approach to generate and expand an immunodominant antigen-specific memory population from primary CD8 T cells. CD8 cells recognizing the mouse H60 epitope were selected as the antigen-specific CD8 population. The H60 glycoprotein is the ligand for NKG2D and the LTFNYRNL peptide is an immunodominant minor transplantation antigen. H60 is expressed by BALB.B (H2b) hematopoietic cells and recognized by C57BL/6 (B6) CD8 cells within the context of the H2Kb molecule. CD8 T cells from normal B6 spleens were positively selected using Miltenyi beads. The purified CD8 cells (97%) were then cultured with bone marrow-derived B6 DC, rmIL-2, and H60 peptide (1μM) for 3 days. Cells were harvested and re-cultured with rmIL-15 for 2–4 days. The resultant CD8 population was enriched 10 fold for tetramer-stained H60+ CD8 T cells (average: 3.0% of CD8 T cells). The H60+ CD8 cells displayed a memory phenotype as characterized by CD44+, Ly6C+, CD62Lintermed, and CD25lo expression. We hypothesized these H60+ CD8 T cells could be further expanded in transplant recipients by lymphopenia-induced proliferation. To determine the expansion and persistence of H60+ TM post-HCT, H60+-enriched CD8 cells were co-transplanted with T cell-depleted B6 bone marrow into 9.0Gy-conditioned syngeneic recipients. The phenotype and number of H60+ cells in recipient spleens and bone marrow were assessed beginning 3 days post-HCT. Notably, the H60+ CD8 cells maintained their memory phenotype and persisted at least 2 months post-transplant. The ex vivo-generated H60+ TM underwent a relative expansion of 1.5–2 fold as assessed in recipient spleens, similar to the post-transplant expansion of H60+ CD8 TM derived in vivo from B6 mice primed to BALB.B cells. Moreover, this post-HCT expansion was also similar to that by an ex vivo-generated, transgenic CD8 TM population. Both (ex vivo and in vivo generated) H60+ TM populations also exhibited expansion (1.5–2 fold) in the bone marrow. In total, an immunodominant antigen-specific CD8 TM population was selectively generated and enriched ex vivo and found to undergo expansion following transplant into ablatively conditioned HCT recipients. The similarities in expansion and persistence between ex vivo generated H60 and in vivo primed H60 populations suggest this approach may have useful applications towards the development of successful adoptive transfer strategies.