Efficacy of Perioperative Portal Venous Inoculation with Donor Lymphocytes on Skin Graft Survivals in the Rat

Although the administration of donor lymphocytes via portal vein (PV) on the day of transplantation significantly prolongs rat renal allograft survivals and the unresponsive state is mediated by an antigen-specific suppressor factor in the serum, significant variations exist among rodent models in terms of immunogenecity and mechanism of antigen presentation. The present studies sought to assess the effect of perioperative PV inoculation with donor lymphocytes on skin allograft survivals. Donor lymphocytes were prepared from Brown-Norway (BN, RT-1a) or third-party DA (RT-1a) rat spleens and lymph nodes and injected via PV or intravenously to Lewis (LEW, RT-11) hosts on the day of skin grafting. Untreated LEW hosts rejected BN skin grafts at 9.0 ± 1.4 days (n= 10). Intravenous administration of 1 ± 108 BN cells into LEW hosts on day 0 did not prolong the skin graft survivals (MST= 8.6 ± 1.2 days, n= 7, NS), whereas PV inoculation of 1 × 108 BN cells prolonged skin graft survival to 13.4 ± 3.9 (n= 8, P