Immune cells that are more easily suppressed allow to receive transplanted organs

Patients who receive organ transplants must take potent drugs to prevent the immune system from rejecting the organs
.

In a new study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at the University of Chicago showed that in mouse models with full transplant tolerance, immune T cells that normally attack transplanted organs are more easily inhibited by regulatory T cells.

The mice used in these experiments received a short-term treatment called co-stimulation blockade, allowing them to receive a heart transplant permanently without having to continue using immunosuppressive drugs
.

"If we can achieve transplant tolerance in mice, we want to understand how the immune system changes when this succeeds?" All said
.

T cells help the immune system fight infections and other foreign invaders
.

Typically, these cells work together to first enhance their response to a virus or pathogenic bacteria and then shut down
smoothly after the infection clears.

A few years ago, Alegre and her team extracted transplant-specific conventional T cells from mice receiving heart transplants and sequenced
their RNA.

"That makes sense, because what we want to achieve in the battle between transplants and cancer is mirroring
," Alegre said.

They initially thought that downregulation of Satb1 would impair traditional T cell function, which explains why these mice received transplantation, but it turned out not to be that simple
.

Alegre said the discovery is still a long way from translating new therapies into humans, but it does give them an idea of what transplant tolerance looks like at the level of
immune cells.

"This reveals two things
.

essay

Reduced Satb1 expression predisposes CD4+ T conventional cells to Treg suppression and promotes transplant survival