In humans receiving intestinal transplantation (ITx), long-term multilineage blood chimerism often develops. Donor T cell macrochimerism (≥4%) frequently occurs without graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) and is associated with reduced rejection. Here we demonstrate that patients with macrochimerism had high graft-versus-host (GvH) to host-versus-graft (HvG) T cell clonal ratios in their allografts. These GvH clones entered the circulation, where their peak levels were associated with declines in HvG clones early post-transplant, suggesting that GvH reactions may contribute to chimerism and control HvG responses without causing GVHD. Consistently, donor-derived T cells, including GvH clones, and CD34+ HSPCs were simultaneously detected in the recipients’ bone marrow (BM) >100 days post-transplant. Individual GvH clones appeared in ileal mucosa or PBMCs before detection in recipient BM, consistent with an intestinal mucosal origin, where donor GvH-reactive T cells expanded early upon entry of recipient APCs into the graft. These results, combined cytotoxic single cell transcriptional profiles of donor T cells in recipient BM, suggest that tissue-resident GvH-reactive donor T cells migrated into the recipient circulation and BM, where they destroyed recipient hematopoietic cells through cytolytic effector functions and promoted engraftment of graft-derived HSPCs that maintain chimerism. These mechanisms suggest an approach to achieving intestinal allograft tolerance.
Jianing Fu, Julien Zuber, Brittany Shonts, Aleksandar Obradovic, Zicheng Wang, Kristjana Frangaj, Wenzhao Meng, Aaron M. Rosenfeld, Elizabeth E. Waffarn, Peter Liou, Sai-Ping Lau, Thomas M. Savage, Suxiao Yang, Kortney Rogers, Nichole M. Danzl, Shilpa Ravella, Prakash Satwani, Alina Iuga, Siu-Hong Ho, Adam Griesemer, Yufeng Shen, Eline T. Luning Prak, Mercedes Martinez, Tomoaki Kato, Megan Sykes
Immunological tolerance to semiallogeneic fetuses is necessary to achieving successful first pregnancy and permitting subsequent pregnancies with the same father. Paradoxically, pregnancy is an important cause of sensitization, resulting in the accelerated rejection of offspring-matched allografts. The underlying basis for divergent outcomes following reencounter of the same alloantigens on transplanted organs versus fetuses in postpartum females is incompletely understood. Using a mouse model that allows concurrent tracking of endogenous fetus-specific T and B cell responses in a single recipient, we show that semiallogeneic pregnancies simultaneously induce fetus-specific T cell tolerance and humoral sensitization. Pregnancy-induced antibodies, but not B cells, impeded transplantation tolerance elicited by costimulation blockade to offspring-matched cardiac grafts. Remarkably, in B cell–deficient mice, allogeneic pregnancy enabled the spontaneous acceptance of fetus-matched allografts. The presence of pregnancy-sensitized B cells that cannot secrete antibodies at the time of heart transplantation was sufficient to precipitate rejection and override pregnancy-established T cell tolerance. Thus, while induction of memory B cells and alloantibodies by pregnancies establishes formidable barriers to transplant success for multigravid women, our observations raise the possibility that humoral desensitization will not only improve transplantation outcomes, but also reveal an unexpected propensity of multiparous recipients to achieve tolerance to offspring-matched allografts.
Ashley N. Suah, Dong-Kha V. Tran, Stella H.W. Khiew, Michael S. Andrade, Jared M. Pollard, Dharmendra Jain, James S. Young, Dengping Yin, Geetha Chalasani, Maria-Luisa Alegre, Anita S. Chong
Tertiary lymphoid organs are aggregates of immune and stromal cells including high endothelial venules and lymphatic vessels that resemble secondary lymphoid organs and can be induced at nonlymphoid sites during inflammation. The function of lymphatic vessels within tertiary lymphoid organs remains poorly understood. During lung transplant tolerance, Foxp3+ cells accumulate in tertiary lymphoid organs that are induced within the pulmonary grafts and are critical for the local downregulation of alloimmune responses. Here, we showed that tolerant lung allografts could induce and maintain tolerance of heterotopic donor-matched hearts through pathways that were dependent on the continued presence of the transplanted lung. Using lung retransplantation, we showed that Foxp3+ cells egressed from tolerant lung allografts via lymphatics and were recruited into donor-matched heart allografts. Indeed, survival of the heart allografts was dependent on lymphatic drainage from the tolerant lung allograft to the periphery. Thus, our work indicates that cellular trafficking from tertiary lymphoid organs regulates immune responses in the periphery. We propose that these findings have important implications for a variety of disease processes that are associated with the induction of tertiary lymphoid organs.
Wenjun Li, Jason M. Gauthier, Alice Y. Tong, Yuriko Terada, Ryuji Higashikubo, Christian C. Frye, Margaret S. Harrison, Kohei Hashimoto, Amit I. Bery, Jon H. Ritter, Ruben G. Nava, Varun Puri, Brian W. Wong, Kory J. Lavine, Ankit Bharat, Alexander S. Krupnick, Andrew E. Gelman, Daniel Kreisel
Graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) causes failed reconstitution of donor plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs) that are critical for immune protection and tolerance. We used both murine and human systems to uncover the mechanisms whereby GVHD induces donor pDC defects. GVHD depleted Flt3-expressing donor multipotent progenitors (MPPs) that sustained pDCs, leading to impaired generation of pDCs. MPP loss was associated with decreased amounts of MPP-producing hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and oxidative stress-induced death of proliferating MPPs. Additionally, alloreactive T cells produced GM-CSF to inhibit MPP expression of Tcf4, the transcription factor essential for pDC development, subverting MPP production of pDCs. GM-CSF did not affect the maturation of pDC precursors. Notably, enhanced recovery of donor pDCs upon adoptive transfer early after allogeneic HSC transplantation repressed GVHD and restored the de novo generation of donor pDCs in recipient mice. pDCs suppressed the proliferation and expansion of activated autologous T cells via a type-I IFN signaling-dependent mechanism. They also produced PD-L1 and LILRB4 to inhibit T cell production of IFN-. We thus demonstrate that GVHD impairs the reconstitution of tolerogenic donor pDCs by depleting DC progenitors rather than by preventing pDC maturation. MPPs are an important target to effectively bolster pDC reconstitution for controlling GVHD.
Yuanyuan Tian, Lijun Meng, Ying Wang, Bohan Li, Hongshuang Yu, Yan Zhou, Tien Bui, Alicia Li, Ciril Abraham, Yongping Zhang, Jian Wang, Chenchen Zhao, Shin Mineishi, Stefania Gallucci, David Porter, Elizabeth Hexner, Hong Zheng, Yanyun Zhang, Shaoyan Hu, Yi Zhang
CD4+ T cells interactions with B cells play a critical role in the pathogenesis of systemic autoimmune diseases such as systemic lupus and chronic graft-versus-host disease (cGVHD). Extrafollicular CD44hiCD62LloPSGL1loCD4+ (PSGL1loCD4+) T cells are associated with the pathogenesis of lupus and cGVHD, but their causal role has not been established. With murine and humanized MHC–/–HLA-A2+DR4+ murine models of cGVHD, we show that both murine and human PSGL1loCD4+ T cells from GVHD target tissues have features of B cell helpers with upregulated-expression of PD1 and ICOS and production of IL-21. They reside in non-lymphoid tissues without circulating in the blood and have features of tissue-resident memory T cells with upregulated-expression of CD69. Murine PSGL1loCD4+ T cells from GVHD target tissues augmented B cell differentiation into plasma cells and production of autoantibodies via their PD1 interaction with PD-L2 on B cells. Human PSGL1loCD4+ T cells were apposed with memory B cells in the liver tissues of humanized mice and cGVHD patients. Human PSGL1loCD4+ T cells from humanized GVHD target tissues also augmented autologous memory B cell differentiation into plasma cells and antibody production in PD1/PD-L2-dependent manner. Further preclinical studies targeting tissue-resident T cells to treat antibody-mediated features of autoimmune diseases are warranted.
Xiaohui Kong, Deye Zeng, Xiwei Wu, Bixin Wang, Shijie Yang, Qingxiao Song, Yongping Zhu, Martha Salas, Hanjun Qin, Ubaydah Nasri, Karen M. Haas, Arthur D. Riggs, Ryotaro Nakamura, Paul J. Martin, Aimin Huang, Defu Zeng
Gene editing of the erythroid-specific BCL11A enhancer in hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) from sickle cell disease (SCD) patients induces fetal hemoglobin (HbF) without detectable toxicity as assessed by mouse xenotransplant. Here, we evaluated autologous engraftment and HbF induction potential of erythroid-specific BCL11A enhancer edited HSPCs in four non-human primates. We utilized a single guide RNA (sgRNA) with identical human and rhesus target sequences to disrupt a GATA1 binding site at the BCL11A +58 erythroid enhancer. Cas9 protein and sgRNA ribonucleoprotein complex (RNP) was electroporated into rhesus HSPCs, followed by autologous infusion after myeloablation. We found that gene edits persisted in peripheral blood (PB) and bone marrow (BM) for up to 101 weeks similarly for BCL11A enhancer or control locus (AAVS1) targeted cells. Biallelic BCL11A enhancer editing resulted in robust γ-globin induction, with the highest levels observed during stress erythropoiesis. Indels were evenly distributed across PB and BM lineages. Off-target edits were not observed. Non-homologous end-joining repair alleles were enriched in engrafting HSCs. In summary, we find that edited HSCs can persist for at least 101 weeks post-transplant, and biallelic edited HSCs provide substantial HbF levels in PB red blood cells, together supporting further clinical translation of this approach.
Selami Demirci, Jing Zeng, Yuxuan Wu, Naoya Uchida, Anne H. Shen, Danilo Pellin, Jackson Gamer, Morgan Yapundich, Claire Drysdale, Jasmine Bonanno, Aylin C. Bonifacino, Allen Krouse, Nathaniel Seth Linde, Theresa Engels, Robert E. Donahue, Juan J. Haro-Mora, Alexis Leonard, Tina Nassehi, Kevin Luk, Shaina N. Porter, Cicera R. Lazzarotto, Shengdar Q. Tsai, Mitchell Weiss, Shondra M. Pruett-Miller, Scot A. Wolfe, Daniel E. Bauer, John F. Tisdale
BACKGROUND. Understanding outcomes and immunologic characteristics of cellular therapy recipients with SARS-CoV-2 is critical to performing these potentially life-saving therapies in the COVID-19 era. In this study of recipients of allogeneic (Allo) and autologous (Auto) hematopoietic cell transplant and CD19-directed chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapy (CAR-T) at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, we aimed to identify clinical variables associated with COVID-19 severity and assess lymphocyte populations. METHODS. We retrospectively investigated patients diagnosed between March 15th and May 7th, 2020. In a subset of patients, lymphocyte immunophenotyping, quantitative real-time PCR from nasopharyngeal swabs, and SARS-CoV-2 antibody status were available. RESULTS. We identified 77 SARS-CoV-2 + cellular therapy recipients (Allo = 35, Auto = 37, CAR-T = 5; median time from cellular therapy 782 days (IQR 354,1611). Overall survival at 30 days was 78%. Clinical variables significantly associated with the composite endpoint of non-rebreather or higher oxygen requirement and death (n events = 25/77) included number of co-morbidities (HR 5.41, P = 0.004), infiltrates (HR 3.08, P = 0.032), and neutropenia (HR 1.15, P = 0.04). Worsening graft-versus-host-disease was not identified among Allo subjects. Immune profiling revealed reductions and rapid recovery in lymphocyte populations across lymphocyte subsets. Antibody responses were seen in a subset of patients. CONCLUSION. In this series of Allo, Auto, and CAR-T recipients, we report overall favorable clinical outcomes for COVID-19 patients without active malignancy and provide preliminary insights into the lymphocyte populations that are key for the anti-viral response and immune reconstitution. FUNDING. NIH P01 CA23766, NIH/NCI P30 CA008748.
Gunjan L. Shah, Susan DeWolf, Yeon Joo Lee, Roni Tamari, Parastoo B. Dahi, Jessica A. Lavery, Josel D. Ruiz, Sean M. Devlin, Christina Cho, Jonathan U. Peled, Ioannis Politikos, Michael Scordo, N. Esther Babady, Tania Jain, Santosha Vardhana, Anthony F. Daniyan, Craig S. Sauter, Juliet N. Barker, Sergio A. Giralt, Cheryl Goss, Peter Maslak, Tobias M. Hohl, Mini Kamboj, Lakshmi Ramanathan, Marcel R.M. van den Brink, Esperanza B. Papadopoulos, Genovefa A. Papanicolaou, Miguel-Angel Perales
Clinical trials are currently testing whether induction of MHC-haploidentical mixed chimerism (Haplo-MC) induces organ transplantation tolerance. Whether Haplo-MC can be used to treat established autoimmune diseases remains unknown. Here, we show that established autoimmunity in euthymic and adult-thymectomized NOD (H-2g7) mice was cured by induction of Haplo-MC under a non-myeloablative anti-thymocyte globulin-based conditioning regimen and infusion of CD4+ T-depleted hematopoietic graft from H-2b/g7 F1 donors that express autoimmune-resistant H-2b or from H-2s/g7 F1 donors that express autoimmune susceptible H-2s. The cure was associated with enhanced thymic negative selection, increased thymic Treg (tTreg) production, and anergy or exhaustion of residual host-type autoreactive T cells in the periphery. The peripheral tolerance was accompanied with expansion of donor- and host-type CD62L1Helios+ tTreg as well as host-type Helios-Nrp1+ peripheral Treg (pTreg) and PD-L1hi plasmacytoid DCs (pDC). Depletion of donor- or host-type Treg cells led to reduction of host-type PD-L1hi pDCs and recurrence of autoimmunity; whereas PD-L1 deficiency in host-type DCs led to reduction of host-type pDCs and Helios-Nrp1+ pTreg cells. Thus, induction of Haplo-MC re-established both central and peripheral tolerance through mechanisms that depend on allo-MHC+ donor-type DC, PD-L1hi host-type DCs, and the generation and persistence of donor and host-type tTreg and pTreg cells.
Yuqing Liu, Xiaoqi Wang, Yongping Zhu, Mingfeng Zhang, Ubaydah Nasri, Sharne S. Sun, Stephen J. Forman, Arthur D. Riggs, Zhang Xi, Defu Zeng
Alarmins, sequestered self-molecules containing damage-associated molecular patterns, are released during tissue injury to drive innate immune cell pro-inflammatory responses. Whether endogenous negative regulators controlling early immune responses are also released at the site of injury is poorly understood. Herein, we establish that the stromal cell-derived alarmin interleukin-33 (IL-33) is a local factor that directly restricts the pro-inflammatory capacity of graft infiltrating macrophages early after transplantation. By assessing heart transplant recipient samples and using a mouse heart transplant model, we establish that IL-33 is upregulated in allografts to limit chronic rejection. Mouse cardiac transplants lacking IL-33 displayed dramatically accelerated vascular occlusion and subsequent fibrosis, which was not due to altered systemic immune responses. Instead, a lack of graft IL-33 caused local augmentation of pro-inflammatory iNOS+ macrophages that accelerated graft loss. IL-33 facilitated a metabolic program in macrophages associated with reparative and regulatory functions, and local delivery of IL-33 prevented the chronic rejection of IL-33-deficient cardiac transplants. Therefore, IL-33 represents a novel regulatory alarmin in transplantation that limits chronic rejection by restraining the local activation of pro-inflammatory macrophages. The local delivery of IL-33 in extracellular matrix based-based materials may be a promising biologic for chronic rejection prophylaxis.
Tengfang Li, Zhongqiang Zhang, Joseph Guido Bartolacci, Gaelen K. Dwyer, Quan Liu, Lisa Mathews, Murugesan Velayutham, Anna Roessing, Yoojin C. Lee, Helong Dai, Sruti Shiva, Martin H. Oberbarnscheidt, Jenna L. Dziki, Steven J. Mullett, Stacy G. Wendell, James D. Wilkinson, .Steven A Webber, Michelle A. Wood-Trageser, Simon C. Watkins, Anthony J. Demetris, George S. Hussey, Stephen F. Badylak, Heth R. Turnquist
Graft-versus-host-disease (GVHD) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). Donor T cells are key mediators in pathogenesis but a contribution from host T cells has not been explored, as conditioning regimens are believed to deplete host T cells. To evaluate a potential role for host T cells in GVHD, the origin of skin and blood T cells was assessed prospectively in patients after HSCT in the absence of GVHD. While blood contained primarily donor-derived T cells, most T cells in the skin were host-derived. We next examined patient skin, colon and blood during acute GVHD. Host T cells were present in all skin and colon acute GVHD specimens studied yet were largely absent in blood. We observed acute skin GVHD in the presence of 100% host T cells. Analysis demonstrated that a subset of host T cells in peripheral tissues were proliferating (Ki67+) and producing the pro-inflammatory cytokines IFNγ and IL-17 in situ. Comparatively, the majority of antigen presenting cells (APC) in tissue in acute GVHD were donor-derived, and donor-derived APC were observed directly adjacent to host T cells. A humanized mouse model demonstrated that host skin-resident T cells could be activated by donor monocytes to generate a GVHD-like dermatitis. Thus, host tissue-resident T cells may play a previously unappreciated pathogenic role in acute GVHD.
Sherrie J. Divito, Anders T. Aasebo, Tiago R. Matos, Pei-Chen Hsieh, Matthew Collin, Christopher P. Elco, John T. O'Malley, Espen S. Bækkevold, Henrik M. Reims, Tobias Gedde-Dahl, Michael Hagerstrom, Jude Hilaire, John W. Lian, Edgar L. Milford, Geraldine S. Pinkus, Vincent T. Ho, Robert J. Soiffer, Haesook T. Kim, Martin C. Mihm Jr, Jerome Ritz, Indira Guleria, Corey S. Cutler, Rachael Clark, Frode L. Jahnsen, Thomas S. Kupper
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