Thymic dendritic cells traffic to thymi of allogeneic recipients and prolong graft survival

Animals.Pathogen-free mice were obtained from the animal breeding facility at the Scripps Research Institute and littermates were randomly assigned to either experimental or control groups.Recipient animals were males of H-2 b strains BALB.B, C57BL/6, or 2C TCR ( 14) (a gift of J. Sprent, The Scripps Research Institute), aged 4-12 weeks.DCs were harvested from (BALB.B × BALB/c)F 1 (H-2 b/d ), BALB/c (H-2 d ), or (C57BL/6 × SJL)F 1 (H-2 b/d ) mice of either sex, varying in age from 4 weeks to 6 months.Organs for transplantations were harvested from male F 1 mice (BALB.B × BALB/c, or C57BL/6 × SJL) and transplanted into male parental strain animals (e.g., BALB.B or C57BL/6, respectively).Thus, transplanted organs were highly immunogenic, being completely allogeneic at every MHC loci.Furthermore