AUTOREACTIVE T-CELL CLONES FROM THE NONOBESE DIABETIC MOUSE

The availability of cloned lines of T cells reactive with islet antige ns has provided investigators with new tools to study how T cells cont ribute to autoimmune disease, T-cell clones isolated from the diabetes -prone nonobese diabetic (NOD) mouse are proving to be particularly va luable for analyzing pathogenesis and hold great promise for determini ng which T-cell subsets are involved in beta-cell destruction versus i mmunoregulation of the inflammatory process. Diabetogenic T-cell clone s have been mostly of the CD4(+), Th1 phenotype, but CD8(+) T cell clo nes are also capable of transferring disease. In some cases, T-cell li nes and clones (CD4(+) and CD8(+)) have been found to have protective properties. In general T cell antigen specificities have not been defi ned, as islet cells or lysates were used as the selecting antigen. How ever, there is an increasing number of reports of T cells specific for defined islet proteins, such as insulin and GAD, and some of these li nes can induce disease. The variety of T-cell clones that have been pr oduced indicate that there may a variety of conditions that lead to or protect against beta-cell destruction and provide further evidence th at autoantigens are generated during development of disease.