The administration of soluble antigenic peptides is known to be effective at inducing tolerance in naïve antigen-reactive CD4+ T cells. This observation forms the basis of antigen-based therapy, which offers the potential to specifically target the auto-reactive CD4+ T cells involved in driving autoimmune disease pathogenesis, whilst leaving the rest of the immune system intact. The prophylactic administration of soluble autoantigen-derived peptides has proven to be effective at inhibiting disease induction in various experimental models of autoimmune disease. However, the clinical requirement is to switch off the activated antigen-experienced CD4+ T cells that are present during an ongoing immune response. The effect of soluble peptide administration of antigenexperienced CD4+ T cells is poorly understood, and several clinical trials using peptides in multiple sclerosis patients had to be halted due to the exacerbation of disease. This thesis characterises the effect of soluble peptide administration on pathogenic antigen-experienced CD4+ T cells, using experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) as a model of autoimmune disease of the central nervous system. Using traceable myelin-reactive T cells from Tg4 mice, it was determined that soluble peptide administration induces substantial expansion of antigen-experienced CD4+ T cells. Despite the increase in number, these cells were no longer able to induce EAE. Production of effector cytokine was significantly decreased in peptide treated antigen-reactive CD4+ T cells, and this correlated with high level expression of the co-inhibitory molecule PD-1. The induction of tolerance in both naïve and antigen-experienced CD4+ T cells was found to be dependent upon PD-1 expression, whereby peptide treatment of naïve and antigen-experienced CD4+ T cells that were deficient in PD-1, did not inhibit disease induction. This thesis identifies a novel mechanism of peptide-induced tolerance in CD4+ T cells, and demonstrates that soluble peptide administration can induce tolerance in antigen-experienced T cells.

Parabiosis is the surgical union of two organisms resulting in the development of a single, shared circulatory system. When animals of different ages are conjoined (i.e. heterochronic parabiosis), blood-borne factors from the parabionts can affect the physiology of the other parabiont. This is manifested sometimes by beneficial, rejuvenating impact upon the older animal's tissues and organs (anti-geronic effect), and sometimes by younger animal's tissues regressing and appearing old-like (pro-geronic effect). These effects, and the ability to identify individual factors that could recapitulate pro- and anti-geronic effects, have made heterochronic parabiosis a very attractive approach to studying biology of aging and rejuvenation.cHowever, heterochronic parabiosis has not been widely used to investigate the aged immune system. An important question to be answered is whether the cellular defects involved in the aged immune system are due to intrinsic defects or if they can be rescued by extrinsic factors. Heterochronic parabiosis is ideal to test cellular migration patterns, interrogate the mechanisms driving migration defects that occur with aging, establish if these defects can be rejuvenated and identify molecules that are targets for intervention. Here, we provide evidence of the importance of reducing differences in the background genetics of different C57BL/6 substrains prior to parabiosis. This improvement allowed us to improve survival and confirm robust lymphocyte equilibration across secondary, but not primary, lymphoid tissues. We found no evidence for rejuvenation of the old immune cells, whereas results suggested that adult peripheral lymph nodes (pLN) lost mass and cellularity, potentially indicating the presence of a pro-geronic factor(s) in the old circulation that affects pLN function. Adult and old immune cells were present in equal frequencies in both adult and old secondary lymphoid tissues, indicating that there was no restriction of cellular migration due to the age of the cell or age of the tissue. The propensity of adult immune cells (i.e. large naïve compartment) to occupy lymph nodes and old immune cells (i.e. large memory compartment) to occupy bone marrow was retained following heterochronic parabiosis. Finally, parabiosis separation experiments illuminated the peripheral survival advantage of old T cells over adult T cells. These results highlight the power of heterochronic parabiosis in studying immune aging and provide hypothesis-generating data for future mechanistic studies of peripheral T cell maintenance with aging.

published_or_final_version / Paediatrics / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / abstract / Zoology / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Surgery / Master / Master of Philosophy

Chlamydia is an obligate intracellular bacterial pathogen that causes a wide spectrum of diseases worldwide. At present, there are no vaccines to prevent chlamydial infections due to poor understanding of how anti-chlamydial immunity ensues. In this study, we employed a variety of in vitro and in vivo systems, including knockout (KO) mice and adoptive transfer, to investigate the role of lung dendritic cells (LDCs) and their relationship with innate lymphocytes, natural killer (NK) and invariant NKT (iNKT) cells, in host defense against chlamydial lung infections in mice. We found that iNKT cells altered the phenotype and cytokine production pattern of LDCs following C. pneumoniae infection. Adoptive transfer of LDCs from infected Jα18-KO mice, which lack iNKT cells, into naïve wild-type (WT) mice promoted Th2 (IL-4) immunity following infection challenge, whereas the transfer of LDCs from the infected WT mice induced protective Th1/Tc1 (IFN-γ) immunity. On the other hand, upon adoptive transfer, LDCs from C. muridarum-infected NK-cell-depleted mice (NK-LDCs) conferred reduced protection after chlamydial challenge than the recipients of LDCs from infected sham-treated mice (NK+LDCs). NK+LDC recipients exhibited an enhanced Th1/Th17, in contrast to Th2, response compared to the NK-LDC recipients. In coculture experiments, NK cells isolated from the infected mice promoted IL-12p70, IL-6, and IL-23 production by LDCs through NKG2D receptor signaling. These findings indicate that iNKT and NK cells condition LDCs to confer protective Th1/Tc1/Th17 immunity against chlamydial lung infection. We also analyzed the contribution of major LDC subsets, CD103+ and CD11bhi LDCs, in host defense against C. muridarum infection. We found that CD103+ and CD11bhi LDC subsets expanded following chlamydial infection. CD103+ LDCs showed higher expression of costimulatory molecules and greater production of Th1- and Th17-inducing cytokines (IL-12, IL-6 and IL-23) than CD11bhi LDCs. Coculture of Chlamydia-specific CD4+ T cells with LDC subsets revealed that the T cells cultured with CD103+ LDCs produced larger amounts of IFN-γ and IL-17 compared to those with CD11bhi LDCs. To test their function in vivo, we isolated CD103+ and CD11bhi LDC subsets from infected mice and transferred them into naïve syngeneic mice that received chlamydial challenge. CD103+ LDC-recipients showed better protection, as evidenced by their reduced body weight loss, bacterial burden and lung pathology, than CD11bhi LDC recipients. Mice that received CD103+, compared to CD11bhi, LDCs produced enhanced Th1/Th17 cytokines (IFN-γ and IL-17) in the lung and the MLNs. In conclusion, these findings demonstrate that CD103+ LDCs are more efficient in inducing Th1/Th17 immunity to chlamydial infection than CD11bhi LDCs. Taken together, our findings have provided direct in vivo evidence on the role of LDCs and their conditioning by iNKT and NK cells in generating mucosal T-cell immunity against a bacterial lung infection. The findings have added new knowledge to the field of lung immunology, which have implications for developing prophylactic and/or therapeutic strategies against respiratory diseases. / October 2015

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