Purpose Severing corneal nerves during corneal transplantation does not affect first corneal transplants, but abolishes immune privilege of subsequent corneal allografts. This abrogation of immune privilege is attributable to the disabling of T regulatory cells (T regs) induced by corneal transplantation. The goal of this study was to determine if severing corneal nerves induces the development...

PURPOSE. Current studies suggest that the immune system plays a critical role in blinding eye disorders. The eye is an immune-privileged site, and FasL expression is a major part of that mechanism because Fas/FasL interactions regulate inflammation and neovascularization, preventing damage to delicate ocular structures. These studies were undertaken to test the idea that modulating immune privi...

The eye is the prototypic immune-privileged organ. Its antigens were once believed to be expressed exclusively in the eye, which resides behind an efficient blood-organ barrier, and were believed to be unknown to the immune system. Self-tolerance to ocular components was therefore believed to be based not on immune tolerance but on immune ignorance. It is now known that the relationship between...

Like other scientists, immunologists use two types of approaches to research: one reduces the problem to its parts; the other studies the emergent phenomenon produced by the parts. Scientists that reduce the problem to its parts are sometimes called reductionists. The conclusions of reductionist experiments are often applied to the greater whole, when in actuality they may only apply to that pa...

Male germ cells (GC) enter meiosis beginning their complex transition into highly specialized spermatozoa at the time of puberty, after the establishment of immune competence. During the process, a myriad of surface and intracellular proteins are expressed, yet these new autoantigens are tolerated by the testis. The immunogenicity of the proteins is not diminished, as shown by their ability to ...

The mechanisms of immune privilege in human nucleus pulposus (NP) remain unclear. Accumulating evidence indicates that Fas ligand (FasL) might play an important role in the immune privilege of the disc. We aimed for addressing the role of FasL expression in human intervertebral disc degeneration (IDD) and immune privilege in terms of the interaction between NP cells and immunocytes via the FasL...

Keratoplasty is the oldest and one of the most successful forms of solid tissue transplantation. In the United States, over 33,000 corneal transplants are performed each year. Unlike other forms of tissue transplantation, keratoplasties are routinely performed without the aid of tissue typing or systemic immunosuppressive drugs. In spite of this, 90% of the first-time corneal transplants will s...