Abstract
By applying somatic cell hybrids to transplantation immunity, the prolongation of survival time of mouse skin allografts was investigated. The hybrid cells (LJ) were made by cell fusion between L cells derived from C3H/He mouse and JLS-V9 cells derived from BALB/c mouse with UV-irradiated Sendai viruses. Skin grafts from female (C3H/He.Jms×BALB/c.Slc) F1 donors were transplanted to male BALB/c.Sle. The survival of the transplant in BALB/c pretreated with the LJ cells and prednisolone showed a significant prolongation, compared with that in animals pretreated with only prednisolone or the LJ cells. The mean survival time and standard deviation of the grafts in mice injected with 1×105 LJ cells i. v. 4 days before the grafting, and subsequently treated with prednisolone 50mg/kg i.p. 1 day before and at the time of the grafting were 17.3±2.2 days. Controls were 9.2±0.4 days. The mechanisms of prolongation of skin grafts were discussed in terms of cell-mediated immunity and humoral factors. Somatic cell hybrids are useful, not only for inducing immunological enhancement, but also for studying the function of major histocompatibility antigens in cellular immunity and can be applied to clinical organ transplantation.
