Prevention of immunoreactivity by depleting or inhibiting antigen presenting cells
Patent Number: 7,288,255
Graft versus host disease occurs after administration of allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell grafts. Essentially, graft versus host represents contaminating T cells from the graft attacking various tissues of the recipient. In some cases graft versus host disease is lethal. In fact, graft versus host disease is one of the largest causes of hematopoietic stem cell transplant associated mortality.
One asks, if graft versus host disease is caused by donor T cells, why not simply deplete the donor T cells from the hematopoietic graft? The reason is that when this is done, while graft versus host disease does become diminished, also diminished is the graft versus tumor effect. Essentially, the graft versus host effect, while attacking healthy tissue also attacks leukemic or tumor tissue as well and has a beneficial effect.
The current patent covers the depletion of antigen presenting cells in the hematopoietic stem cell graft. The inventors provide data suggesting that depletion of various antigen presenting cells in the graft lead to decreased graft versus host.
View this patent on the USPTO website.
Social & Bookmarking:
1 Comment | Add Comment
Add Comment
You must be signed-in to add your comments.
Sign-in now or Join the StemCellPatents.com Community for free.
Debby Atkinson said...
I do not understand why depletion of the DONOR antigen presenting cells would result in the reduction of graft versus host. If the situation of recipient antigen presenting cell depletion was provided, then it would make sense. This doesnt seem right.
See there was a publication in Transplantation Collin et al, 2005 Mar 27;79(6):722-5. In which depletion of DC by antibody in the tarket tissue (skin) was performed. This however makes no sense since IF IT WAS possible to deplete from the blood (the hematopoieitc graft), why would anyone play with the skin?