Macrophage-restricted interleukin-10 receptor deficiency, but not IL-10 deficiency, causes severe spontaneous colitis

Interleukin-10 (IL-10) is a pleiotropic anti-inflammatory cytokine produced and sensed by most hematopoietic cells. Genome-wide association studies and experimental animal models point at a central role of the IL-10 axis in inflammatory bowel diseases. Here we investigated the importance of intestinal macrophage production of IL-10 and their IL-10 exposure, as well as the existence of an IL-10-based autocrine regulatory loop in the gut. Specifically, we generated mice harboring IL-10 or IL-10 receptor (IL-10Rα) mutations in intestinal lamina propria-resident chemokine receptor CX3CR1-expressing macrophages. We found macrophage-derived IL-10 dispensable for gut homeostasis and maintenance of colonic T regulatory cells. In contrast, loss of IL-10 receptor expression impaired the critical conditioning of these monocyte-derived macrophages and resulted in spontaneous development of severe colitis. Collectively, our results highlight IL-10 as a critical homeostatic macrophage-conditioning agent in the colon and define intestinal CX3CR1(hi) macrophages as a decisive factor that determines gut health or inflammation.

Lack of conventional dendritic cells is compatible with normal development and T cell homeostasis, but causes myeloid proliferative syndrome

Dendritic cells are critically involved in the promotion and regulation of T cell responses. Here, we report a mouse strain that lacks conventional CD11c(hi) dendritic cells (cDCs) because of constitutive cell-type specific expression of a suicide gene. As expected, cDC-less mice failed to mount effective T cell responses resulting in impaired viral clearance. In contrast, neither thymic negative selection nor T regulatory cell generation or T cell homeostasis were markedly affected. Unexpectedly, cDC-less mice developed a progressive myeloproliferative disorder characterized by prominent extramedullary hematopoiesis and increased serum amounts of the cytokine Flt3 ligand. Our data identify a critical role of cDCs in the control of steady-state hematopoiesis, revealing a feedback loop that links peripheral cDCs to myelogenesis through soluble growth factors, such as Flt3 ligand.

Organ-dependent in vivo priming of naive CD4+, but not CD8+, T cells by plasmacytoid dendritic cells

Plasmacytoid dendritic cells (PDCs) play a pivotal role as cytokine-secreting accessory cells in the antimicrobial immune defense. In contrast, the capacity of PDCs to act as antigen-presenting cells in naive T cell priming remains unclear. By studying T cell responses in mice that lack conventional DCs (cDCs), and by the use of a PDC-specific antigen-targeting strategy, we show that PDCs can initiate productive naive CD4⁺ T cell responses in lymph nodes, but not in the spleen. PDC-triggered CD4⁺ T cell responses differed from cDC-driven responses in that they were not associated with concomitant CD8⁺ T cell priming. Our results establish PDCs as a bona fide DC subset that initiates unique CD4⁺ Th cell–dominated primary immune responses.

CD11chighDendritic Cell Ablation Impairs Lymphopenia-Driven Proliferation of Naive and Memory CD8+T Cells

The peripheral lymphocyte pool size is governed by homeostatic mechanisms. Thus, grafted T cells expand and replenish T cell compartments in lymphopenic hosts. Lymphopenia-driven proliferation of naive CD8+ T cells depends on self-peptide/MHC class I complexes and the cytokine IL-7. Lymphopenia-driven proliferation and maintenance of memory CD8+ T cells are MHC independent, but are believed to require IL-7 and contact with a bone marrow-derived cell that presents the cytokine IL-15 by virtue of its high affinity receptor (IL-15Ralpha). In this study we show that optimal spontaneous proliferation of grafted naive and memory CD8+ T cells in mice rendered lymphopenic through gene ablation or irradiation requires the presence of CD11chigh dendritic cells. Our results suggest a dual role of CD11chigh dendritic cells as unique APC and cytokine-presenting cells.

Large-Scale Preparation of Human Anti—Third-Party Veto Cytotoxic T Lymphocytes Depleted of Graft-Versus-Host Reactivity: A New Source for Graft Facilitating Cells in Bone Marrow Transplantation

Induction of donor type chimerism in mildly prepared hosts without graft-versus-host disease (GvHD) is a most desirable goal in bone morrow transplantation. We have recently demonstrated in a mouse model that donor veto cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) can facilitate the induction of donor type chimerism in sublethally irradiated recipients without causing GvHD if they are effectively depleted of alloreactivity against host cells by means of stimulation against a third party. We extend this approach to human cells, by preparing CTLs in two major steps: primary culture in the absence of interleukin 2, leading to death by neglect of antihost clones, and addition of interleukin 2 and subsequent dilution of antihost clones as a consequence of the expansion of the anti-third-party clones. CTLs prepared in this way specifically suppress host cytotoxic T cells directed against antigens of the donor, but not against fourth-party antigens, as demonstrated in a standard (51)Cr release assay. We conclude that human anti-third-party CTLs afford a new source of veto cells that are depleted of potential graft-versus-host-reactive clones. The cells generated by this approach could potentially be used to facilitate engraftment of allogeneic hematopoietic stem cells.

Eradication of B-CLL by autologous and allogeneic host nonreactive anti–third-party CTLs

Establishment of cell lines capable of killing leukemia cells, in the absence of alloreactivity against normal host cells, represents a most desirable goal in bone marrow transplantation (BMT) and cancer immunotherapy. By using a human → mouse chimeric model, we demonstrate that allogeneic anti-third-party cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) depleted of alloreactivity are endowed with a potent anti-B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia (B-CLL) reactivity. Likewise, CTL preparations generated from autologous T cells of the same patients with B-CLL exhibited comparable leukemia eradication, suggesting that the reactivity of allogeneic anti-third-party CTLs is not mediated by residual antihost clones. This specificity was also exhibited in vitro, and annexin staining revealed that B-CLL killing is mediated by apoptosis. While the CTLs killing of third-party cells could be blocked by anti-CD3 antibody, the lysis of the B-CLL cells was not inhibited by this antibody, suggesting a T-cell receptor (TCR)-independent cytotoxicity. The role of cell contact leading to apoptosis of B-CLL cells is shown in transwell plates and by anti-lymphocyte function-associated antigen-1 (LFA-1)-blocking antibody. Up-regulation of CD54 and the subsequent apoptosis of B-CLL cells depend on the initial LFA-1/ICAM-1 (intercellular adhesion molecule 1) interaction. Taken together, these results suggest that allogeneic or autologous host nonreactive anti-third-party CTLs may represent a new therapeutic approach for patients with B-CLL. (Blood. 2005;105:3365-3371)

Detecting protein sequence conservation via metric embeddings

MOTIVATION

Comparing two protein databases is a fundamental task in biosequence annotation. Given two databases, one must find all pairs of proteins that align with high score under a biologically meaningful substitution score matrix, such as a BLOSUM matrix (Henikoff and Henikoff, 1992). Distance-based approaches to this problem map each peptide in the database to a point in a metric space, such that peptides aligning with higher scores are mapped to closer points. Many techniques exist to discover close pairs of points in a metric space efficiently, but the challenge in applying this work to proteomic comparison is to find a distance mapping that accurately encodes all the distinctions among residue pairs made by a proteomic score matrix. Buhler (2002) proposed one such mapping but found that it led to a relatively inefficient algorithm for protein-protein comparison.

RESULTS

This work proposes a new distance mapping for peptides under the BLOSUM matrices that permits more efficient similarity search. We first propose a new distance function on peptides derived from a given score matrix. We then show how to map peptides to bit vectors such that the distance between any two peptides is closely approximated by the Hamming distance (i.e. number of mismatches) between their corresponding bit vectors. We combine these two results with the LSH-ALL-PAIRS-SIM algorithm of Buhler (2002) to produce an improved distance-based algorithm for proteomic comparison. An initial implementation of the improved algorithm exhibits sensitivity within 5% of that of the original LSH-ALL-PAIRS-SIM, while running up to eight times faster.

Immune regulatory activity of CD34+ progenitor cells: evidence for a deletion-based mechanism mediated by TNF-alpha

Previous studies suggest that cells within the CD34(+) hematopoietic stem cell compartment are endowed with immune regulatory activity. Furthermore, it is possible to expand the human regulatory cells upon short-term culture of purified CD34+ cells with an early-acting cytokine cocktail. We now show that addition of anti-CD28, anti-CD2, interleukin-2 (IL-2), anti-IL-10, or IL-12 to the bulk mixed lymphocyte reaction (MLR) cannot reverse the inhibitory activity of the CD34+ cells, ruling out anergy-based mechanisms or mechanisms involving Th1-Th2 skewing. Furthermore, phenotyping of cells present after addition of CD34+ cells to the bulk MLR ruled out potential induction of plasmacytoid dendritic precursors, known to be endowed with regulatory activity. In contrast, the inhibitory activity of CD34+ cells could be reversed by adding the caspase inhibitor BD-FMK to the bulk MLR, indicating a deletion-based mechanism. The deletion can be inhibited by anti-tumor necrosis factor-alpha (anti-TNF-alpha) and not by anti-transforming growth factor-beta (anti-TGF-beta), suggesting a potential role for TNF-alpha in the regulatory activity of CD34+ cells.

Tolerance induction by megadose hematopoietic progenitor cells: expansion of veto cells by short-term culture of purified human CD34(+) cells

Stem cell-dose escalation is one way to overcome immune rejection of incompatible stem cells. However, the number of hematopoietic precursors required for overcoming the immune barrier in recipients pretreated with sublethal regimens cannot be attained with the state-of-the-art technology for stem cell mobilization. This issue was addressed by the observation that cells within the human CD34(+) population are endowed with veto activity. In the current study, we demonstrated that it is possible to harvest about 28- to 80-fold more veto cells on culturing of purified CD34(+) cells for 7 to 12 days with an early-acting cytokine mixture including Flt3-ligand, stem cell factor, and thrombopoietin. Analysis of the expanded cells with fluorescence-activated cell-sorter scanning revealed that the predominant phenotype of CD34(+)CD33(-) cells used at the initiation of the culture was replaced at the end of the culture by cells expressing early myeloid phenotypes such as CD34(+)CD33(+) and CD34(-)CD33(+). These maturation events were associated with a significant gain in veto activity as exemplified by the minimal ratio of veto to effector cells at which significant veto activity was detected. Thus, whereas purified unexpanded CD34(+) cells exhibited veto activity at a veto-to-effector cell ratio of 0.5, the expanded cells attained an equivalent activity at a ratio of 0.125. The availability of novel sources of veto cells such as those in this study might contribute to the realization of immunologic tolerance in "minitransplants," without any risk of graft-versus-host disease.

Anti-third party CD8+ CTLs as potent veto cells: coexpression of CD8 and FasL is a prerequisite

Several bone marrow cells and lymphocyte subpopulations, known as "veto cells," were shown to induce transplantation tolerance across major histocompatibility antigens. Recently, it has been suggested that anti-third party CTLs depleted of alloreactivity are endowed with marked veto activity and therefore might potentially facilitate bone marrow allografting without graft versus host disease (GVHD). The veto mechanism is still obscure. While early studies emphasized the role of CD8-mediated apoptosis, more recent evidence indicates a role for Fas-FasL. In the present study we show, by using blocking anti-CD8 antibody, by generating CTLs from FasL or perforin mutated mice, and by gene transfer of FasL, that the veto activity of anti-third party CD8+ CTLs is dependent upon the simultaneous expression of both CD8 and FasL.

Induction of donor-type chimerism and transplantation tolerance across major histocompatibility barriers in sublethally irradiated mice by Sca-1(+)Lin(-) bone marrow progenitor cells: synergism with non-alloreactive (host x donor)F(1) T cells

Induction of transplantation tolerance by means of bone marrow (BM) transplantation could become a reality if it was possible to achieve engraftment of hematopoietic stem cells under nonlethal preparatory cytoreduction of the recipient. To that end, BM facilitating cells, veto cells, or other tolerance-inducing cells, have been extensively studied. In the present study, we show that BM cells within the Sca-1(+)Lin(-) cell fraction, previously shown to be enriched for early hematopoietic progenitors, are capable of reducing specifically antidonor CTL-p frequency in vitro and in vivo, and of inducing split chimerism in sublethally 7-Gy-irradiated recipient mice across major histocompatibility complex barriers. The immune tolerance induced by the Sca-1(+)Lin(-) cells was also associated with specific tolerance toward donor-type skin grafts. The minimal number of cells required to overcome the host immunity remaining after 7 Gy total body irradiation is very large and, therefore, it may be very difficult to harvest sufficient cells for patients. This challenge was further addressed in our study by demonstrating that non-alloreactive (host x donor)F(1) T cells, previously shown to enhance T-cell-depleted BM allografts in lethally irradiated mice, synergize with Sca-1(+)Lin(-) cells in their capacity to overcome the major transplantation barrier presented by the sublethal mouse model.

Tolerance induction by "megadose" hematopoietic transplants: donor-type human CD34 stem cells induce potent specific reduction of host anti-donor cytotoxic T lymphocyte precursors in mixed lymphocyte culture

BACKGROUND

Recently, the use of megadoses of CD34+ hematopoietic progenitors has been reported to abrogate resistance to engraftment, thus overcoming major histocompatibility barriers in bone marrow transplantation in leukemia patients.

METHODS

The ability of human CD34+ cells to possess potent tolerizing activity was studied by limiting dilution analysis of cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) precursors (CTL-p) in human peripheral blood lymphocytes after addition of purified CD34+ cells.

RESULTS

The addition of purified human CD34+ cells to primary mixed lymphocyte culture led to a marked reduction of antiallogeneic CTL-p frequency against stimulator cells of the same origin, compared with the response against cells of third-party origin. The CD34+ cells caused a marked inhibition of the CTL activity, when added at an equal number with the responder T cells, and they were still present after the mixed lymphocyte culture, which suggests that no significant killing of CD34+ cells had occurred. The tolerizing activity is abrogated by irradiation and requires cell contact. This pattern of tolerization most closely resembles what has been ascribed to veto cells in other systems. Phenotypic analysis of the purified CD34+ cells showed that they express MHC class I and class II antigens, but do not express costimulatory molecules of the B7 family.

CONCLUSIONS

It is possible, that CD34+ cells in the megadose transplants-perhaps by their inability to provide costimulatory molecules-are actively reducing the frequency of CTL-p directed against their antigens, and thereby help to overcome allogeneic rejection, and enhance their own engraftment.

Deletion of chromosome 2 is an early event in the development of radiation-induced myeloid leukemia in SJL/J mice

In this study we have analyzed the chromosomal changes in the preleukemic phase in SJL/J mice treated with radiation and acute myeloid leukemias (AMLs) induced by radiation alone or with additional corticosteroid treatment. SJL/J mice exposed to 300 rad whole body irradiation developed a low incidence of AML (20-25%) that could be markedly increased (to 50-70%) by additional coleukemogenic treatment with corticosteroids. Partial deletion in one chromosome 2 was found in 100% of bone marrow and spleen cells of leukemic animals in both treatment modalities, whereas the age-matched controls exhibited a normal karyotype. Five types of deletion were observed according to site and size, but region D through G was the common missing part in all five types of chromosome 2 deletion. The occurrence of chromosome 2 deletion was also tested among bone marrow cells removed from 17 mice, 4 months after exposure to 300 rad whole body irradiation, long before the time when AML development is expected. About 80% of the mice tested had different levels of deleted chromosome 2 among their bone marrow population. Cytological and histological examination of bone marrow and spleen of most tested animals showed a normal hematologic picture. These results suggest that the marker chromosome is related to the process of radiation-induced initiation of AML in SJL/J mice.

Distribution of preleukemic cells in fractionated bone marrow of mice

Separation of preleukemic cells (having the potential to develop further into overt T-cell leukemias) from bone marrow cell populations was attempted. Donor mice of preleukemic bone marrow included C57BL/6 mice inoculated intrathymically with D-RadLV or AKR/J mice carrying spontaneous preleukemic cells among their bone marrow cells. Fractionation of bone marrow cells suspended in bovine serum albumin (BSA) by equilibrium density centrifugation or by velocity sedimentation at 1 g unit gravity using discontinuous density gradient of Ficoll was applied. The leukemogenic potential of the separated bone marrow fractions was tested by evaluating leukemia development following their transfer into appropriate recipients. No enrichment of D-RadLV-induced preleukemic cells was found in any of the four bone marrow fractions obtained following separation on BSA gradient. Separation of D-RadLV-induced preleukemic cells was afforded by using the Ficoll gradients. Preleukemic cells were located mainly among four out of 21 fractions tested, consisting mostly of 10 to 14 micrometers size cells. In contrast, preleukemic cells from AKR donors were distributed among most of the separated fractions. It is suggested that these variable results may reflect homogeneity or heterogeneity of progenitor target cells undergoing transformation.

Malignant cell arrest in thymus and spleen of mice bearing transplanted tumors

The relationship between the local outgrowth of different subcutaneous transplantable tumors (plasmacytoma MOPC-315, mastocytoma P-815; Lewis lung carcinoma-3LL; fibrosarcoma; lymphomas and mammary adenocarcinoma) and tumor cell spread in different organs was evaluated. The presence of tumor cells in thymus, spleen, lung, and liver was demonstrated by using both in vivo and in vitro methods. Sequestration of tumor cells derived from the transplanted solid tumor was indicated within 3 to 7 days after tumor graft, shortly before or after early palpable outgrowth of the primary tumor was observed. Tumor cells present in thymus and spleen might affect immune responses of tumor-bearing mice.

Malignant cell arrest in thymus and spleen of mice bearing transplanted tumors

The relationship between the local outgrowth of different subcutaneous transplantable tumors (plasmacytoma MOPC-315, mastocytoma P-815; Lewis lung carcinoma-3LL; fibrosarcoma; lymphomas and mammary adenocarcinoma) and tumor cell spread in different organs was evaluated. The presence of tumor cells in thymus, spleen, lung, and liver was demonstrated by using both in vivo and in vitro methods. Sequestration of tumor cells derived from the transplanted solid tumor was indicated within 3 to 7 days after tumor graft, shortly before or after early palpable outgrowth of the primary tumor was observed. Tumor cells present in thymus and spleen might affect immune responses of tumor-bearing mice.