E. Kobayashi et al., PREVENTION BY LIVER-TRANSPLANTATION OF THE GRAFT-VERSUS-HOST REACTIONAND ALLOGRAFT-REJECTION IN A RAT MODEL OF SMALL-BOWEL TRANSPLANTATION, Transplantation, 57(2), 1994, pp. 177-181
In the rat combination of DA (MHC haplotype RT1(av1)) donor into PVG(R
T1(c)) recipient, liver grafts are not rejected and allow the acceptan
ce of other organ grafts from the same donor strain. Here we show that
an existing DA liver graft allows the acceptance of a DA small bowel
graft in the PVG; the liver graft also prevented the graft-versus-host
reaction normally associated with small bowel grafting. In addition,
a liver graft could suppress the GVHR in F-1 hybrid recipients of pare
ntal lymphoid cells, a classic GVHR model. GVHR suppression was immuno
logically specific and required that donor lymphocytes and liver be of
the same strain. Besides their clinical implications, these results d
emonstrate the capacity of the liver for tolerance induction and sugge
st that it may play a physiological role in negative selection of T ce
lls.