collagen ii-primed foxp3 transduced t cells ameliorate collagen-induced arthritis in rats: the effect of antigenic priming on t regulatory cell function

Regulatory t cells (tregs) play a major role in the prevention of autoimmune diseases. transfer of foxp3 gene into conventional t cells converts their phenotype to regulatory t cells. therefore, the question arises as to whether adoptively transferred in vitro differentiated treg cells specific for a locally expressed antigen might have better inhibitory effects on the progression of the disease as compared with antigen-nonspecific t reg cells. herein, we investigated the therapeutic potential of primed and unprimed retrovirus mediated foxp3-overexpression t cells following intravenously injected of these cells into affected rats with collagen-induced arthritis (cia), an animal model of rheumatoid arthritis. our analyses demonstrate that systemic administration of collagen ii primed foxp3-transduced t cells could markedly ameliorate cia inflammatory responses at clinical (p<0.0014) and pathological exchanges including cellular infiltration (p=0.002), bone erosion (p=0.0013) and synovial hyperplasia (p=0.002). in contrast, collagen ii unprimed foxp3-transduced t cells like as collagen ii primed or unprimed gfp-transduced t cells did not reveal any beneficial effects on arthritis features as compared with untreated group (p>0.05). therefore, we believe that collagen ii primed foxp3-transduced t cells are interacting locally and systemically with immune cells which reveled with decreasing of t cells infiltration into joints along with specific cii igg production. considering the results described here, it appears that the using patients' t cells which previously exposed to specific antigens may have more effective therapeutic advantage in the production of induced regulatory t cells in the treatment of arthritis.