Donor-lymphocyte infusion induces transplantation tolerance by activating systemic and graft-infiltrating double-negative regulatory T cells.

Donor-lymphocyte infusion (DLI) before transplantation can lead to specific tolerance to allografts in mice, nonhuman primates, and humans. We and others have demonstrated a role for regulatory T cells in DLI-induced, donor-specific transplantation tolerance, but it is not known how regulatory T cells are activated and where they execute their function. In this study, we observed, in both transgenic and normal mice, that DLI before transplantation is required for activation of alphabeta-T-cell-receptor-positive, CD3(+)CD4(-)CD8(-) double-negative (DN) regulatory T cells in the periphery of recipient mice. More interestingly, DLI induced DN regulatory T cells to migrate preferentially to donor-specific allogeneic skin grafts and to form a majority of graft-infiltrating T cells in accepted skin allografts. Furthermore, both recipient-derived peripheral and graft-infiltrating DN T cells were able to suppress and kill antidonor CD8(+) T cells in an antigen-specific manner. These data indicate that DLI may induce donor-specific transplantation tolerance by activating recipient DN regulatory T cells in the periphery and by promoting migration of regulatory T cells to donor-specific allogeneic skin grafts. Our results also show that DN regulatory T cells can eliminate antidonor T cells both systemically and locally, a finding suggesting that graft-infiltrating T cells can be beneficial to graft survival.