|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
By
From the * Medical Research Council Cellular Immunology Unit, Sir William Dunn School of
Pathology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3RE United Kingdom; Rats of the PVG.RT1u strain develop autoimmune diabetes when thymectomized at 6 wk of
age and are rendered relatively lymphopenic by a cumulative dose of 1,000 rads 137Cs Institute National de la
Santé et de la Recherche Médicale U28, Hôpital Purpan, 31059, Toulouse, France; and § Infectious
Disease Division, University of California, San Francisco, California 94143-0654
-irradiation given in four split doses. Previous studies have shown that the disease is prevented by the
intravenous injection of 5 × 106 CD4+ CD45RC
TCR
+ RT6+ peripheral T cells from
normal syngeneic donors. These cells have a memory phenotype and are presumably primed to
some extrathymic antigen. However, we now report that the CD4+ CD8 population of mature thymocytes is a very potent source of cells, with the capacity to prevent diabetes in our
lymphopenic animals. As few as 6 × 105 of these cells protect ~50% of recipients and the level
of protection increases with cell dose. It appears that one characteristic of the intrathymic selection of the T cell repertoire is the generation of cells that regulate the autoimmune potential of
peripheral T cells that have been neither clonally deleted intrathymically nor rendered irreversibly anergic in the periphery.
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
This article has been cited by other articles:
| TABLE OF CONTENTS |
|
