Gamma delta T cells in the pathobiology of murine acute graft-versus-host disease. Evidence that gamma delta T cells mediate natural killer-like cytotoxicity in the host and that elimination of these cells from donors significantly reduces mortality.

NK-like cytotoxicity in F1-hybrid mice with acute GVH disease is mediated by donor-derived CD3+/CD4-/CD8- cells that can lyse both NK-sensitive YAC-1 target cells as well as NK-resistant targets such as BW1100 and P815. Our objective was to determine whether this activity is mediated by gamma delta TCR+ cells. We showed that NK-like cytotoxic activity in the spleen and lymph nodes of mice with acute GVH disease could be depleted by indirect complement-mediated lysis using an Ab against gamma delta TCR. When purified NK1.1+ spleen cells that had been positively selected on a magnetic cell separator were used as effector cells, we found that NK-like cytotoxicity was mediated only by gamma delta TCR+ cells, suggesting that cells with NK-like activity are gamma delta TCR+/NK1.1+. We showed by flow cytometry experiments that coexpression of NK1.1 and TCR-gamma delta occurred on a large proportion of large granular lymphocytes in the spleens of GVH mice, but was not detectable in normal control mice. In GVH mice, fewer than 10% of small agranular NK1.1+ lymphocytes coexpressed NK1.1+ and gamma delta TCR+. On the basis of this hypothesis, we postulate that graft-derived large granular lymphocytes develop the NK1.1+/gamma delta TCR+ phenotype during the reaction, and that these cells play a role in the pathogenesis of acute GVH disease. We performed experiments to determine whether depletion of gamma delta T cells from donor mice affected the outcome of lethal GVH disease and found that there was a significant reduction in mortality.