title: Maturation-resistant dendritic cells ameliorate experimental autoimmune uveoretinitis.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Endogenous uveitis is a chronic inflammatory eye disease of human, which frequently leads to blindness. Experimental autoimmune uveoretinitis (EAU) is an animal disease model of human endogenous uveitis and can be induced in susceptible animals by immunization with retinal antigens. EAU resembles the key immunological characteristics of human disease in that both are CD4(+) T-cell mediated diseases. Dendritic cells (DCs) are specialized antigen-presenting cells that are uniquely capable of activating naïve T cells. Regulation of immune responses through modulation of DCs has thus been tried extensively. Recently our group reported that donor strain-derived immature DC pretreatment successfully controlled the adverse immune response during allogeneic transplantation.
  
  
  METHODS
  EAU was induced by immunization with human interphotoreceptor retinoid-binding protein (IRBP) peptide(1-20). Dendritic cells were differentiated from bone marrow in the presence of recombinant GM-CSF.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In this study, we used paraformaldehyde-fixed bone marrow-derived DCs to maintain them in an immature state. Pretreatment with fixed immature DCs, but not fixed mature DCs, ameliorated the disease progression of EAU by inhibiting uveitogenic CD4(+) T cell activation and differentiation.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Application of iBMDC prepared according to the protocol of this study would provide an important treatment modality for the autoimmune diseases and transplantation rejection.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Immunology, Transplantation Research Institute, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul 110-799, Korea.
authors.forename: Keunhee
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Oh
authors.forename: Yon Su
authors.initials: YS
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Dong-Sup
authors.initials: DS
authors.lastname: Lee