Ontogeny of the transplantation immunity of mice for rejecting ascitic allogeneic tumors.
Ontogeny of the murine transplantation immunity for rejecting ascitic allogeneic tumors (chemically-induced RG lymphoma and L1210 leukemia) as a model of in vivo cytotoxic T cell immunity was studied. Challenge by 10(6) to 10(7) allogeneic tumor cells per 20 g body weight (b.w.) of the mouse was fatal to 1-3 day-old mice, whereas 7-30 day-old mice rejected the tumor. In newborn mice however some yet undetermined mechanism worked to temporally depress the initial tumor growth. Injection of low (10(6) cells per 20 g b.w.) to moderate (10(7)) doses of semiallogeneic spleen cells into newborn mice prepared for second set rejection of the tumor carrying the same alloantigens as the spleen cells, although injection of high dose (3 X 10(8)) cells reduced the tumor rejecting immunity. This second set rejection occurred even against the allogeneic tumor inoculated as early as 3 days old, if the mice had been primed with the alloantigens at birth. It appears therefore that newborn and early suckling mice are protected from tumor invasion by cytotoxic immunity more powerfully than expected from earlier in vitro works.
D000367:Age Factors; D000818:Animals; D000831:Animals, Newborn; D006084:Graft Rejection; D007939:Leukemia L1210 / Q000276:immunology; D008223:Lymphoma / Q000276:immunology; D051379:Mice; D008815:Mice, Inbred Strains; D009368:Neoplasm Transplantation; D013154:Spleen / Q000276:immunology; D013602:T-Lymphocytes, Cytotoxic / Q000276:immunology; D014181:Transplantation Immunology; D014184:Transplantation, Homologous