BYSTANDER SUPPRESSION OF MURINE COLLAGEN-INDUCED ARTHRITIS BY LONG-TERM NASAL ADMINISTRATION OF A SELF TYPE-II COLLAGEN PEPTIDE

Oral and more recently nasal tolerance have attracted attention as pot ential treatments of autoimmune disease. Arthritis induced by bovine t ype II collagen (CII) is a widely used animal model of rheumatoid arth ritis, which is here used to investigate the efficacy of nasal treatme nt by a short peptide. The peptide spans residues 707-721 (designated p707), an epitope of mouse CII that is most strongly recognized after immunization of mice with this self-protein. The treatment was partial ly effective, but almost only when the peptide was administered in lar ge doses over a prolonged period. Mice immunized with bovine CII respo nd mainly to other peptides, located in the CB11 fragment around amino acid residues 256-270. The tolerance effect therefore results from in tramolecular suppression, between epitopes located in different parts of this large protein.