Survival of deoxyguanosine-treated fetal thymus allografts is prevented by priming with dendritic cells

Abstract

Allogeneic thymus lobes rendered alymphoid by treatment with deoxyguanosine are not rejected in normal mice despite expression of class I and class II MHC antigens on donor cells. The results presented here show that the injection of as few as 10,000 cells from dendritic cell-enriched populations is followed by the rejection of deoxyguanosine-treated grafts. These findings support the notion that treated thymus grafts do not provoke rejection because they lack dendritic cells, which are destroyed by deoxyguanosine.