GSBS Dissertations and Theses
Publication Date
July 2005
Document Type
Doctoral Dissertation
Department
Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, MD/PhD Program
Subjects
Clonal Anergy; DNA-Binding Proteins; Transcription Factors; Zinc Fingers; Antigens, Surface; CD4-Positive T-Lymphocytes; Diabetes Mellitus, Type 1; Islets of Langerhans Transplantation; Immune Tolerance; Immunosuppression; Academic Dissertations; Dissertations, UMMS
Abstract
The prevalence of diabetes is approaching epidemic proportions worldwide. There is currently no cure for type 1 diabetes, and successful treatment requires constant monitoring of blood sugars and use of exogenous insulin to prevent hyperglycemia. Diabetes will be curable when pancreatic β-islet cells can be transplanted into diabetes patients without requiring long-term immunosuppression. This will require learning more about the induction of functional tolerance, a state that maintains the competence of the immune system to most antigens but protects graft-specific antigens from immune rejection, permitting transplantation. One known mechanism of peripheral tolerance is T cell anergy, a phenotype of hypo-reponsiveness in CD4+ T cells. The focus of this thesis is a description of factors shown to be specific to the induction and maintenance of T cell anergy, whose loss reverses the anergic phenotype, restoring the ability of the cells to proliferate in response to antigen. The first of these is Egr-2, a zinc-finger transcription factor, whose presence is required for the induction of anergy induced in T cell clones by TCR stimulation in the absence of costimulation. Egr-2 is shown to be important to anergy induction but not anergy maintenance. In contrast, a negative costimulation receptor, PD-1, is shown to be necessary for the maintenance of anergy. It is possible that learning more about the genetic factors that orchestrate T cell anergy will prove useful in the development of tolerance-based protocols for organ and tissue transplantation without the use of long-term immunosuppression.
Repository Citation
Bishop, KD. Egr-2 and PD-1 Are Required for Induction and Maintenance of T Cell Anergy: A Dissertation. (2005). University of Massachusetts Medical School. GSBS Dissertations and Theses. Paper 354. https://escholarship.umassmed.edu/gsbs_diss/354
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