| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 口腔生物科學研究所 === 97 === Many diseases are well known to be caused by excessive and unexpected immune responses such as graft-versus-host diseases (GVHD), asthma, and other severe autoimmune diseases including rheumatoid arthritis (RA), multiple sclerosis (MS), and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Up to the present time, many immunosuppressive drugs have been used to treat these diseases effectively to treat but with many side-effects. Pentoxifylline (PTX) and triptolide (TPT) are used in different kinds of diseases for a long time and show some immune regulatory functions, but the mechanisms are still not completely understood. In this study, we isolated CD4 T cells from DO11.10 mice and DCs from BALB/c mice. We treated these immune cells with PTX or TPT and analyzed their phenotype and function including cytokine secretion, cell surface markers expression, and cell proliferation. We found that both PTX and TPT inhibited CD4 T cells activation including IL-2 secretion and cell proliferation; however, they did not induce Foxp3 expression and IL-10 secretion, which are the important characteristics of regulatory T cells. On the other hand, we found that PTX induced the expression of CD86 on DCs and promoted IL-12 secretion, while TPT did not affect the surface marker expression on DCs and inhibited the IL-12 secretion. In the present study, we suggest that both PTX and TPT inhibit CD4 T cell activation, and their immunosuppressive functions might not mediate through regulatory T cell induction. In addition, these two drugs have different effects on dendritic cell functions, and these results show that they have the potential to be applied in different diseases.
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