Regulatory T cells (Treg) play important roles in suppressing immune responses and maintaining tolerance. Rabbit antithymocyte globulin (rATG) and horse ATG (hATG) are widely used in the treatment of immune-mediated syndromes, but their effects on Treg are unknown. We show here that in vitro culture of normal human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) with a low-dose rATG resulted in mark...

Intrathymic T-cell differentiation is a key process for the development and maintenance of cell-mediated immunity, and occurs concomitantly to highly regulated migratory events. We have proposed a multivectorial model for describing intrathymic thymocyte migration. One of the individual vectors comprises interactions mediated by laminins (LMs), a heterotrimeric protein family of the extracellul...

Previous studies revealed a significant production of inflammatory cytokines together with severe thymic atrophy and thymocyte migratory disturbances during experimental Chagas disease. Migratory activity of thymocytes and mature T cells seem to be finely tuned by cytokines, chemokines and extracellular matrix (ECM) components. Systemic TNF-α is enhanced during infection and appears to be cruci...

It is currently unknown whether immunosuppressive therapy or hematopoietic stem cell transplantation is the most appropriate treatment strategy for children with refractory cytopenia and normal karyotype or trisomy 8. We report on 31 children with hypoplastic refractory cytopenia treated with immunosuppressive therapy consisting of antithymocyte globulin and cyclosporine. At 6 months, 22 of 29 ...

Acute cellular rejection after liver transplantation (LT) can be treated with steroid pulse therapy, but there is no ideal treatment for steroid-resistant acute rejection (SRAR). We aimed to determine the feasibility and potential complications of rabbit anti-thymocyte globulin (rATG) application to treat SRAR in liver transplant recipients. We retrospectively reviewed medical records of 429 re...

Recent study of human thymocyte-thymic epithelial (TE) cell interactions has demonstrated that thymocytes bind to TE cells, and a consequence of this binding is the provision of accessory cell signals by TE cells for phytohemagglutinin (PHA)-induced mature thymocyte activation. In this paper we report on studies of the molecules involved in TE cell-dependent mature thymocyte activation. TE-thym...

Antithymocyte globulin (ATG) and antilymphocyte globulin (ALG) are effective therapies in aplastic anemia; their mechanism of action is undefined. We assayed multiple properties of ATG and ALG to address the biological and immunological bases for differences between ATG and ALG and lot variation. In addition, we studied a lot reported to be inactive in an American clinical trial; however in ret...

6. Peschle C, Marmont AM, Marone G, Genovesi A, Sasso G, Condorelli M: Pure red cell aplasia: Studies on an IgG serum inhibitor neutralizing erythropoietin. Br I Haematol 30:405, 1975 7. Krantz SB: Studies on red cell aplasia. III. Treatment with horse antihuman thymocyte gamma globulin. Blood 39:347, 1972 8. Marmont AM, Peschle C, Sanguineti M, Condorelli M: Pure red cell aplasia (PRCA): Respo...