Heart Transplant Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Heart Transplant, including details on risks, prognosis, procedure, surgery, organ donation.

Development of CD25- regulatory T cells following heart transplantation: evidence for transfer of long-term survival.

Degauque N, Lair D, Braudeau C, Haspot F, Sébille F, Dupont A, Merieau E, Brouard S, Soulillou JP

Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM), Université de Nantes, UMR 643, Nantes, France.

Donor-specific heart allograft acceptance can be induced in the MHC-mismatched LEW.1 W to LEW.1A rat by donor-specific transfusions. Whereas the induction phase of tolerance has been studied in detail, its maintenance remained poorly understood. Here, we performed a side-by-side comparison of CD25+ and CD25- splenic T cells of 100-day tolerant rats. Administration of CD25- T cells from tolerant rats to sublethally irradiated recipients transferred long-term graft survival. These CD25- T cells displayed a decreased donor-specific response in the mixed lymphocyte reaction and presented suppressive activity. These CD25- T cells accumulated IFN-gamma, IL-10 and Foxp3 transcripts. The in vitro suppressive activity of CD25- T cells required both cell contact and soluble factors (IL-10 and IFN-gamma). The CD25+ T cells from tolerant rats did not show any modification of their regulatory properties. We show that splenic CD25- T cells of tolerant rats contribute to the maintenance of tolerance following the transplantation. Our data show that regulatory T cells are not restricted to the CD4+ CD25+ T cell subset and provide new insights on the mechanisms of tolerance to allograft following donor cell priming.

Published 27 December 2006 in Eur J Immunol, 37(1): 147-56.
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