Visualization of Antigen-specific T Cell in Living Arthritic Mice

It has been shown that CD4+ T cells play a crucial role in the pathogenesis of several autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis. In fact, CD4+ T cells can be found in target organs in both human and mouse models of autoimmunity; thus, autoantigen-specific CD4+ T cells have tissue-specific ho...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of Nippon Medical School Vol. 73; no. 6; pp. 298 - 299
Main Authors Atsuo Nakajima, Seiji Kamijo, Taro Yoshioka
Format Journal Article
LanguageJapanese
Published The Medical Association of Nippon Medical School 2006
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Summary:It has been shown that CD4+ T cells play a crucial role in the pathogenesis of several autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis. In fact, CD4+ T cells can be found in target organs in both human and mouse models of autoimmunity; thus, autoantigen-specific CD4+ T cells have tissue-specific homing properties 1. However, homing kinetics of such cells in vivo has not been clearly understood. To directly examine whether type II collagen (CII)-specific T cells home to the site of inflammation, we generated T cell hybridomas derived from CII-specific T-cell receptor (TCR)-transgenic mice. We transduced a CII-specific T cell with a gene encoding a green fluorescent protein (GFP)-luciferase fusion protein (termed CII-GFP-Luc), and tested the patterns of cell trafficking with whole-body bioluminescence imaging of the labeled cells in living animals2, 3. We injected either CII-GFP-Luc or myelin basic protein (MBP)-specific T cells that carry GFP-luciferase genes (termed MBP-GFP Luc) into mice that had severe arthritis and obtained serial images of the mice.
ISSN:1345-4676