Abstract
Regulatory T (Tregs) cells play a crucial role in immunoregulation and promotion of immunological tolerance. Adoptive transfer of these cells has therefore been of interest in the field of bone marrow and solid organ transplantation, autoimmune diseases and allergy medicine. In bone marrow transplantation, Tregs play a pivotal role in the prevention of graft-verus-host disease (GvHD). This has generated interest in using adoptive Treg cellular therapy in the prevention and treatment of GvHD. There have been several barriers to the feasibility of Treg cellular therapy in the setting of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) which include low Treg concentration in peripheral blood, requiring expansion of the Treg population; instability of the expanded product with loss of FoxP3 expression; and issues related to the purity of the expanded product. Despite these challenges, investigators have been able to successfully expand these cells both in vivo and in vitro and have demonstrated that they can be safely infused in humans for the prevention and treatment of GvHD with no increase in relapse risk or infections risk.
Document Type
Review
Publication Date
5-16-2017
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.3390/biomedicines5020023
Repository Citation
Ramlal, Reshma and Hildebrandt, Gerhard C., "Advances in the Use of Regulatory T-Cells for the Prevention and Therapy of Graft-vs.-Host Disease" (2017). Internal Medicine Faculty Publications. 104.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/internalmedicine_facpub/104
Notes/Citation Information
Published in Biomedicines, v. 5, issue 2, 23, p. 1-7.
© 2017 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).