Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, Madison, WI, USA.
Department of Animal Science, 201F Kildee Hall, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA.
Life Sci Alliance. 2021 Jun 10;4(7). doi: 10.26508/lsa.202000999. Print 2021 Jul.
Invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells are a conserved population of innate T lymphocytes that interact with key antigen-presenting cells to modulate adaptive T-cell responses in ways that can either promote protective immunity, or limit pathological immune activation. Understanding the immunological networks engaged by iNKT cells to mediate these opposing functions is a key pre-requisite to effectively using iNKT cells for therapeutic applications. Using a human umbilical cord blood xenotransplantation model, we show here that co-transplanted allogeneic CD4 iNKT cells interact with monocytes and T cells in the graft to coordinate pro-hematopoietic and immunoregulatory pathways. The nexus of iNKT cells, monocytes, and cord blood T cells led to the release of cytokines (IL-3, GM-CSF) that enhance hematopoietic stem and progenitor cell activity, and concurrently induced PGE-mediated suppression of T-cell inflammatory responses that limit hematopoietic stem and progenitor cell engraftment. This resulted in successful long-term hematopoietic engraftment without pretransplant conditioning, including multi-lineage human chimerism and colonization of the spleen by antibody-producing human B cells. These results highlight the potential for using iNKT cellular immunotherapy to improve rates of hematopoietic engraftment independently of pretransplant conditioning.
固有自然杀伤 T(iNKT)细胞是一种保守的先天 T 淋巴细胞群,与关键的抗原呈递细胞相互作用,以调节适应性 T 细胞反应,从而促进保护性免疫或限制病理性免疫激活。了解 iNKT 细胞介导这些相反功能的免疫网络是有效将 iNKT 细胞用于治疗应用的关键前提。在这里,我们使用人脐带血异种移植模型表明,共移植的同种异体 CD4 iNKT 细胞与移植物中的单核细胞和 T 细胞相互作用,协调促造血和免疫调节途径。iNKT 细胞、单核细胞和脐血 T 细胞的交汇导致细胞因子(IL-3、GM-CSF)的释放,增强造血干细胞和祖细胞的活性,同时诱导 PGE 介导的 T 细胞炎症反应抑制,限制造血干细胞和祖细胞的植入。这导致无需移植前预处理即可成功进行长期造血植入,包括多谱系人嵌合和产生抗体的人 B 细胞在脾脏的定植。这些结果突出了使用 iNKT 细胞免疫疗法在不依赖移植前预处理的情况下提高造血植入率的潜力。