自己免疫疾患の病態形成に関わる細胞・分子と臨床応用　　制御性ｔ細胞と自己免疫疾患

Abstract

CD25+CD4+ regulatory T cells are naturally anergic and suppressive. They differentiate through thymus as professional regulator to control immunological self-tolerance in the periphery. When they are depleted from normal animals, various organ-specific autoimmune diseases spontaneously develop, and reconstitution of regulatory T cells prevents the diseases. Transcriptional factor FoxP3 is the master gene for differentiation and function of regulatory T cells. Mutation of FoxP3 gene causes development of autoimmune disease in both human and mouse. There are accumulating reports that regulatory T cells are abnormal in their number or function in several animal models and also patients with autoimmune diseases. These findings indicate that regulatory T cells are involved in the pathogenesis of many autoimmune diseases. Regulatory T cells can also be employed for the treatment of autoimmune diseases. Further studies of regulatory T cells, especially the detection of their specific markers and the development of the method to propagate them in an antigen-specific manner, will facilitate their clinical application.

Attenuation of delayed-type hypersensitivity by fullerene treatment

“…Treg cells also constitute a distinct subset that ameliorates immune pathology through suppression of pathogenic T cells (Tanaka and Sakaguchi, 2005). In contrast with the aggravating function of Th17 cells on autoimmune diseases, Treg cells have a critical function in the regulation of autoimmune diseases, including DTH (Fontenot et al, 2003;Sakaguchi, 2004;Sato et al, 2006).…”