Research Paper Volume 13, Issue 12 pp 16219—16228

Immunological discrepancy in aged mice facilitates skin allograft survival

Wei-Chen Lee1, , Yu-Chao Wang1, , Hsiu-Ying Hsu1, , Pao-Yueh Hsu1, , Chih-Hsien Cheng1, , Chen-Fang Lee1, , Ting-Jung Wu1, , Kun-Ming Chan1, ,

  • 1 Division of Liver and Transplantation Surgery, Department of General Surgery, Chang-Gung Memorial Hospital, Chang-Gung University College of Medicine, Taoyuan, Taiwan

Received: January 4, 2021       Accepted: May 14, 2021       Published: June 22, 2021      

https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.203152
How to Cite

Copyright: © 2021 Lee et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

More and more aged people are undergoing organ transplantation. Understanding aging effects on immunity will be helpful for post-transplantation care and adjustment of immunosuppressants for aged recipients. A mouse model, using C3H mice as donors and aged/young C57BL/10J mice as recipients, was employed to study aging effects on immunity. The results showed that frequency of myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSC) and level of TGF-β was higher in aged mice than in young mice (4.4 ± 1.4% versus 1.6 ± 1.1%, p = 0.026 for MDSC; 21.04 ± 3.91 ng/ml versus 15.26 ± 5.01 ng/ml, p = 0.026 for TGF-β). In vivo, skin allograft survived longer on the aged than on young mice (19.7 ± 5.2 days versus 11.9 ± 4.1 days, p = 0.005). When entinostat was applied to block MDSC, the survival of skin allografts on aged mice was shorten to 13.5 ± 4.7 days which was not different from the survival on young mice (p = 0.359). In conclusion, allogeneic immunity was different in aged from young mice in high frequency of MDSC and high serum level of TGF-β. Blocking the function of MDSC reversed the low immunity in aged mice and caused skin allograft rejection similar to young recipients.

Abbreviations

MDSC: myeloid-derived suppressor cells; DC: dendritic cells; MLR: mixed lymphocyte reaction; OD: optical densities; Ag: antigen; CFSE: 5-(and-6)-carboxyfluorescein diacetate succinimidyl este; Ag: antigen.