Infusion of Sulfosuccinimidyl-4-[N-maleimidomethyl]cyclohexane-1-carboxylate-Conjugated MOG35-55-Coupled Spleen Cells Effectively Prevents and Reverses Experimental Autoimmune Encephalomyelitis in Mice

In this study,we have evaluated our recently developed method for antigen-cell coupling using sulfosuccinimidyl-4-[n-maleimidomethyl]cyclohexane-1-carboxylate (sulfo-smcc) heterobifunctional crosslinker in prevention and reversal of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (eae). we demonstrate that infusion of mog35-55-coupled spleen cells (mog-sp) significantly prevents and reverses eae. further studies show that the protected animals exhibit significantly delayed eae upon eae reinduction. moreover,adoptive transfer of cd4+ t cells from the protected mice to naïve syngeneic mice renders the recipient mice resistant to eae induction. unexpectedly,cd4+ t cell proliferation is similar upon ex vivo stimulation by mog35-55 amongst all groups. however,further analysis of those proliferating cd4+ t cells shows remarkable differences in foxp3+ regulatory t cells (70% in mog-sp groups versus 10-25% in control groups) and in il-17+ cells (2-3% in mog-sp groups versus 6-9% in control groups). in addition,we discover that mog-sp treatment also significantly attenuates mog35-55-responding ifn-γ-producing th1 cells. these findings suggest that mog-sp treatment induces eae protective mog35-55-specific regulatory t cells and suppresses eae pathogenic th17 and th1 cells. our study provides a novel approach for antigen-based eae immunotherapy,which can potentially be translated into clinical application for immunotherapy of multiple sclerosis. © 2015 lanfang zhang et al.