Depletion of alloreactive T cells by AICD prevents acute GvHD in a murine P→F₁ GvHD model.

Depicted are survival curves representing 3 independent experiments in which F₁ recipients (n = 10) received 2.5 × 10⁶ purified viable parental donor T lymphocytes. T cells from C3H/He mice (H-2^k) previously primed to H-2^d alloantigen in vivo were restimulated with H-2^d–expressing BALB/c stimulator cells and depleted from alloreactivity by AICD. Following adoptive transfer of treated T lymphocytes into irradiated (6.5 Gy [650 cGy]) female F₁hosts, recipients did not develop acute GvHD, in contrast to mice injected with untreated allogeneic control cell blasts. (A) Depletion of transferred CD4⁺ T cells from host reactivity by induction of AICD into F₁ recipients prevents development of acute GvHD (▪, P < .05). In contrast, transfer of activated untreated control cells (▾) or donor T lymphocytes depleted of alloreactive responders by soluble anti-CD95 mAb (●) led to rapid and lethal GvHD within 20 days after transfer (P < .05). Controls shown received equivalent numbers of syngeneic spleen cells (■). (B) The same experiments as described in panel A but performed with allogeneic CD8⁺ T cells are presented.