Dendritic cells amplify T cell-mediated immune responses in the central nervous system

J Immunol. 2006 Dec 1;177(11):7750-60. doi: 10.4049/jimmunol.177.11.7750.

Abstract

Neuroinflammation often starts with the invasion of T lymphocytes into the CNS leading to recruitment of macrophages and amplification of inflammation. In this study, we show that dendritic cells (DCs) facilitate T-T cell help in the CNS and contribute to the amplification of local neuroinflammation. We adoptively transferred defined amounts of naive TCR-transgenic (TCR) recombination-activating gene-1-deficient T cells into another TCR-transgenic mouse strain expressing different Ag specificity. Following adoptive transfers, we coinjected DCs that presented one or multiple Ags into the brain and followed the activation of T cells with defined specificities simultaneously. Injection of DCs presenting both Ags simultaneously led to significantly higher infiltration of T cells into the brain compared with injection of a mixture of DCs pulsed with two Ags separately. DCs mediated either cooperative or competitive interactions between T cell populations with different specificities depending upon their MHC-restricting element usage. These results suggest that DC-mediated cooperation between brain-infiltrating T cells of different Ag specificities in the CNS plays an important role in regulation of neuroinflammation. This work also implies that blocking Ag-specific responses may block not only the targeted specificities, but may also effectively block their cooperative assistance to other T cells. Therefore, these data justify more attention to Ag-specific therapeutic approaches for neuroinflammation.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

MeSH terms

  • Adoptive Transfer
  • Animals
  • Antigen Presentation / immunology*
  • Brain / immunology*
  • Brain / pathology
  • Cell Communication / immunology*
  • Dendritic Cells / immunology*
  • Flow Cytometry
  • Histocompatibility Antigens Class II / immunology
  • Immunohistochemistry
  • Inflammation / immunology
  • Inflammation / pathology
  • Lymphocyte Activation / immunology
  • Mice
  • Mice, Transgenic
  • RNA, Small Interfering
  • Receptors, Antigen, T-Cell / genetics
  • Receptors, Antigen, T-Cell / immunology
  • Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction
  • T-Lymphocytes / immunology*

Substances

  • Histocompatibility Antigens Class II
  • RNA, Small Interfering
  • Receptors, Antigen, T-Cell