Abstract
Paradoxically, a single injection of recombinant murine interleukin (IL)-12 on the day of bone marrow transplantation (BMT) inhibits graft-vs.-host disease (GVHD) while preserving graft-vs.-leukemia (GVL) effects in lethally irradiated mice receiving fully MHC-mismatched bone marrow and spleen cells. These protective effects are mediated by interferon (IFN)-γ, whose early secretion is induced by IL-12 treatment. We investigated the relationship of IL-12 dose and timing of administration, as well as timing and type of total-body irradiation (TBI), with the ability of IL-12 to inhibit GVHD or mediate toxicity. The results show that a relatively low dose of IL-12 (as little as 50 U in a single injection) can mediate significant GVHD protection. The timing of IL-12 administration, however, is a critical factor. IL-12 administered 1 hour before BMT was most protective, but protection was still observed when it was administered 1-12 hours after BMT. Delaying IL-12 administration to 36 hours post-BMT completely obviated its protective effect. Administration of a second IL-12 injection 6 days after BMT negated the protective effect . of an initial injection at the time of BMT. While IL-12 protection was evident when TBI was administered by 137Cs-irradiator in one or two fractions on day -1 or day 0, the use of an X-irradiator to deliver TBI on day -1 was associated with marked IL-12 toxicity. Whereas the protective effect of IL-12 against GVHD depended on donor-derived IFN-γ, toxicity depended on the ability of host cells to produce IFN-γ. Careful studies are warranted to test the effects of IL-12 in die context of BMT with various conditioning regimens in large animal preclinical models before this novel approach to GVHD protection can be applied clinically.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 277-284 |
Number of pages | 8 |
Journal | Biology of Blood and Marrow Transplantation |
Volume | 5 |
Issue number | 5 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 1999 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was supported in part by NIH Grants RO1-CA64912, PO1 AI35225, RO1 AI 34495, and R37 AL56062; American Cancer Society Grant RPG-95-071-03-CIM, and the Genetics Institute. We thank Dr. Thomas R. Spitzer and Dr. Yong-Guang Yang for helpful review of the manuscript and Diane Plemenos for expert secretarial assistance.
Keywords
- Graft-vs.-host disease
- Interferon-γ
- Interleukin-12