Prevention of Graft Versus Host Disease by Inactivation of Host Antigen-Presenting Cells
Warren D. Shlomchik,
1
Matthew S. Couzens,
1
Cheng Bi Tang,
1
Jennifer McNiff,
3
Marie E. Robert,
4
Jinli Liu,
56
Mark J. Shlomchik,
56*
Stephen G. Emerson
12*
Graft versus host disease, an alloimmune attack on host tissues
mounted by donor T cells, is the most important toxicity of allogeneic
bone marrow transplantation. The mechanism by which allogeneic T cells
are initially stimulated is unknown. In a murine allogeneic bone marrow
transplantation model it was found that, despite the presence of
numerous donor antigen-presenting cells, only host-derived
antigen-presenting cells initiated graft versus host disease. Thus,
strategies for preventing graft versus host disease could be developed
that are based on inactivating host antigen-presenting cells. Such
strategies could expand the safety and application of allogeneic bone
marrow transplantation in treatment of common genetic and neoplastic
diseases.
1 Department of Medicine, Hematology and
Oncology Division,
2 Department of Pediatrics,
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
3 Department of Dermatology,
4 Department of Pathology,
5 Department of Laboratory Medicine,
6 Department of Immunobiology, Yale University
School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06510, USA.
*
These authors contributed equally to this work.
To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail:
emersons{at}mail.med.upenn.edu
