What is the role of regulatory T cells in transplantation tolerance?

✍ Scribed by Yuan Zhai; Jerzy W Kupiec-Weglinski

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 67 KB
• Volume: 11
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0952-7915
• DOI: 10.1016/s0952-7915(99)00007-2

✦ Synopsis

There has been considerable recent progress in the characterization of the regulatory T cells that mediate tolerance in a number of transplantation models. The conditions that facilitate the generation of regulatory T cells point to the thymus, the nature of immune suppression and the dose of immunosuppressive agent(s) being important. Putative mechanisms of immune regulation by regulatory T cells, particularly in the 'infectious' tolerance pathway, include Th2-type cytokines (IL-4, IL-10 and transforming growth factor β) that may play a direct role as an indispensable requirement or may contribute indirectly as a favorable milieu for acquisition of tolerance. Anergic T cells may suppress immune responses via either cytokine competition or antigen-presenting cells. Models of autoimmune disease, in which regulatory T cells were shown to represent a distinct thymus-derived T cell subset, also suggest the role of antigen-presenting cells in mediating immune suppression. Progress has also been made in generating and characterizing regulatory T cells in vitro.