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Access to abstract permanently restricted to Ball State community only / Access to thesis permanently restricted to Ball State community only / Department of Physiology and Health Science

Vesicle associated membrane protein 2 (VAMP 2) is a synaptic vesicle protein involved with exocytosis in many different cell types, such as pancreatic cells, parotid salivary cells, adrenal cells, skeletal cells, and adipocytes. Also, white blood cells such as eosinophils, neutrophils, and mast cells have been characterized to process VAMP 2. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that VAMP 2 is associated with the vesicle population in rabbits B lymphocytes and may serve as the v-SNARE for vesicular antibody release. Two Rabbit B lymphoblast cell lines were used to detect the presence of VAMP 2, which are the 240 E IgG secreting plasmacytoma-like cell line and 55D1 IgM surface expressing cells. The cell lines were broken down into vesicle and plasma membrane fractions. Immune dot blots demonstrated VAMP 2 was positive in the vesicle fraction of both cell lines. However, VAMP 2 was expressed more by the 240 E IgG secreting cell line. Western blots displayed diverse results with bands that ran at or below 20 KDa, which is consistent with the known molecular weight bands for VAMP 2 of 12.6 kDa and 18 kDa. Our results suggested that VAMP 2 is associated with the vesicle population in rabbit B lymphocytes and could serve as the v- SNARE for vesicular antibody release. / Access to thesis permanently restricted to Ball State community. / Department of Physiology and Health Science

VAMP-7 has been found to interact with SNAP-23, a t-SNARE that functions in relocating granule membranes in response to stimulation, and plays a large role in the regulation of granule release from mast cells in response to an allergic reaction. While evidence suggests that VAMP-7 is active in antibody release in the innate immune system, little investigation has been completed on VAMP-7 interaction in specific antibody release of B lymphocytes of the humoral immune system. Little research has previously focused on vesicular transport within B lymphocytes, leaving molecular mechanisms within B lymphocytes a mystery. Immunodot blots, western blots, and immunoflourescent microscopy were all utilized with the goal of identifying the presence of VAMP- 7. Immunobot blots for both 55D1 and 240E cells were all negative for the presence of VAMP-7. However, VAMP-7 was detected using immunoflourescent microscopy in both 55D1 and 240E cell lines. / Access to thesis permanently restricted to Ball State community. / Department of Physiology and Health Science

B cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia (B-CLL) is a hematologic neoplasm characterised by the proliferation and accumulation of sIgM+/D+ B cells that fail to progress to the final stages of B cell development. The malignant cells in B-CLL also express the pan-T cell antigen CD5, suggesting that CLL is a malignancy of the CD5+ subset of B cells. Additional characteristics of the malignant clone include a low proliferative index, enhanced in vivo survival and constitutive expression of the anti-apoptosis oncoprotein bcl-2. The behaviour of leukemic CD5 B cells in vitro contrasts their arrested in vivo state. That is, despite the majority of cells being arrested in the G0 phase of the cell cycle, the leukemic B cells are not irreversibly frozen as they can be induced to differentiate to Ig-secreting cells under appropriate in vitro conditions. Furthermore, leukemic CD5 B cells rapidly undergo death by apoptosis following in vitro culture. This thesis describes the requirements for in vitro activation of leukemic CD5+ B cells, the characterisation of the events involved in apoptosis of these cells as well as the identification of various growth factors capable of modulating these events. Stimulation of unfractionated peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBLs) from three patients with B-CLL with the phorbol ester PMA and the mitogens PHA and PWM resulted in significant increases in cell proliferation, RNA synthesis and 1gM secretion when compared to unstimulated cell populations. PMA was the most potent inducer of 1gM secretion and this occurred irrespective of the presence of residual T cells. PMA-induced proliferation and RNA synthesis were also independent of T cells. However, in the presence of T cells, these parameters of cellular activation were enhanced during in vitro culture. Thus, the inductive ability of PMA on leukemic CD5 B cells was independent of T cells. In contrast, activation and differentiation of the leukemic CD5 B cells into 1gM-secreting cells following culture with mitogens did not occur in the absence of T cells. Interestingly, co-stimulation of leukemic CD5+ B cells with PMA and anti-Ig induced cellular responses that exceeded those induced by either activator alone. Thus, leukemic CD5+ B cells from patients with B-CLL can be activated in vitro and differentiate in response to stimulation via both T cell-dependent and T cell-independent mechanisms. Apoptotic cell death was characterised in purified leukemic CD5 B cells obtained from six B-CLL patients. All leukemic CD5 B cell populations entered an apoptotic pathway in vitro as evidenced by a reduction in cell size, loss of cell viability and fragmentation of DNA into multimers of -180 base pairs. Following 24 hours of in vitro culture 24.0±16% of DNA was fragmented. After 8 days, the majority of DNA was fragmented, and fewer than 10% of cultured cells were viable. Examination of bcl-2 expression in the malignant B cells by flow cytometry revealed a unimodal pattern of expression in greater than 85% of cells from each B-CLL patient prior to culture. During in vitro culture, bcl-2 expression became bimodal such that the B cells displayed a bcl-2hjgh and bcl-2iow phenotype. The level of expression by the bCl2hjgh cells was similar to that observed prior to in vitro culture, indicating that bcl-2 is down-regulated in apoptosing cells. Interestingly, despite this downregulation, the overall number of cells positive for bcl-2 remained constant. This suggests that the enhanced survival of leukemic CD5+ B cells in vivo is mediated by the sustained expression of bcl-2 and that additional mechanisms exist capable of overriding the protective effect of bcl-2 when bcl-2 is present at reduced levels. Leukemic B cell apoptosis has previously been reported to be delayed or prevented by IL-4, IFN-y and IFN-a. These results were confirmed in this study where it was found that culture of leukemic CD5 B cells with IL-4 or IFN-y enhanced cell viability and delayed apoptosis in 6/6 and 5/6 populations of leukemic B cells, respectively. This function was also found to be shared by IL-2, IL-6, IL-13 and TNF-a as these cytokines enhanced cell viability and delayed apoptosis in some of the cell populations examined at a level similar to that observed for IL-4 and IFN-y. These cytokines may mediate their effect via the expression of bcl2 as culture in the presence of IL-2, IL-4, IL-6, IL-13, IFN-y or TNF-a resulted in a higher percentage of cells displaying the bcl-2high phenotype, compared to unstimulated cells. Taken together, these results suggest that autocrine and/or paracrine growth loops may play a role in the pathogenesis of B-CLL and that cytokines that prevent apoptosis in vitro may be targets for treatment of this B cell malignancy.

Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) is an autoimmune disease where the immune system destroys the insulin-producing beta cells within the pancreas. Due to the difficulty of obtaining relevant tissue samples from patients at risk of disease, many researchers have utilized the nonobese diabetic (NOD) mouse as a model of T1D due to their natural high susceptibility for this disease which shares many characteristics with human patients. This model has been critical for uncovering many mechanisms involved in the pathogenesis of T1D including the key roles played by autoreactive T cells in the destruction of beta cells. More recently, NOD mice have shown that self-reactive B cells act as important antigen presenting cells for activating and amplifying the T cell response against beta cells. In order to identify faulty self-tolerance mechanisms causing production and activation of B cells recognizing beta cell proteins, we have developed a transgenic mouse model whereby elevated numbers of B cells are made specific for a neo-self antigen whose expression is restricted to beta cells on the T1D-prone NOD genetic background and compared it to that of transgenic mice of the non-autoimmune prone C57BL/6 (B6) genetic background. These studies revealed that NOD and B6 B cells can both be effectively tolerized to the model beta cell-restricted antigen. However, provision of help from activated T cells readily overturned this tolerance on the NOD but not the B6 background. Prior evidence has associated Idd5 (chromosome 1) and Idd9/11 (chromosome 4) diabetes susceptibility loci in NOD mice with the development of self reactive B cells contributing to T1D. The gene encoding CTLA-4 has been identified as the major candidate susceptibility gene within Idd5, thus leading to our studies comparing B cell expression of this molecule in NOD and diabetes-resistant strains. Although almost always associated with down-modulating T cells responses, our studies and that of others confirm expression of CTLA-4 by activated B cells. We encountered B cell expression of CTLA-4 to vary from that of T cells, being expressed earlier and predominantly on the cell surface rather than within intracellular vesicles. Our studies also showed aberrant expression of different splice variants of CTLA-4 by NOD B cells compared to diabetes-resistant mice controlled by genes within and outside the Idd5 genetic locus. Hence, these studies raise the possibility that CTLA-4 may contribute to T1D through its actions on both T and B cells. Given the large nature of the Idd9/11 susceptibility locus in NOD mice and the absence of any strong candidate genes that may influence the diabetogenic capacity of B cells in this strain, we resorted to microarray technology to reveal putative genes within this genomic region with the potential to control the B cell phenotype. We focused our microarray studies on the first transitional (T1) B cell population in the spleen given that it is an important stage of tolerance to peripherally expressed self-antigens which have been found to possess various defects in NOD mice. Comparing gene expression profiles of NOD T1 B cells that expressed susceptibility or resistance alleles at the Idd9/11 locus identified 20 differentially expressed genes with the potential to contribute to development of diabetogenic B cells. Overall, data presented in this thesis provides a greater understanding of the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying B cell contribution to T1D in NOD mice. These data are hoped to eventually lead to the development of selective strategies for removing or inhibiting only those B cells that contribute to development of T1D while ensuring that humoral immunity to foreign pathogens remains intact in human patients at risk of developing disease.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2004. / Supervisor: Philip W. Tucker. Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Also available from UMI.

Thesis (M.D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2005.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Committee on Cell Physiology, June 2002. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.