Cyclosporine inhibits the development of green fluorescent protein (GFP)-specific immune responses after transplantation of GFP-expressing hematopoietic repopulating cells in dogs.

Green fluorescent proteins (GFPs) have been widely used to monitor gene transfer and expression after lentiviral and oncoretroviral transduction of hematopoietic cells. Studies have shown a complete disappearance of GFP-containing cells after transplantation of GFP-transduced repopulating cells in nonhuman primates that was further shown to be mediated by transgene-specific immune responses. We wished to evaluate whether cyclosporine could prevent immune responses to GFP. We first determined whether an immune response to GFP was responsible for the disappearance of gene-modified cells in dogs. We performed immune assays in two dogs transplanted with lentivirally transduced CD34+ cells. Blood samples were obtained twice per week for up to 800 days and the GFP transgene product was measured by flow cytometry in blood leukocytes. Peripheral blood leukocytes were stimulated in vitro for 5 days, using a panel of GFP peptides. Intracellular levels of tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha), measured by flow cytometry, and T cell proliferation after GFP peptide stimulation were measured. Dogs that exhibited a decrease in GFP marking developed potent immune responses in vitro to the transgene product GFP as shown by an increase in GFP-specific TNF-alpha production (p < 0.05) when compared with nontransplanted controls. T cells from dogs with low GFP marking exhibited a significant increase in proliferation in response to GFP peptide stimulation in vitro (p < 0.05). To study whether cyclosporine could inhibit the development of GFP-specific immune responses, we treated five dogs with cyclosporine after transplantation of GFP-transduced hematopoietic cells. Dogs treated with cyclosporine after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation showed stable GFP marking in blood leukocytes over 800 days. Our data suggest that cyclosporine prevents immunoactivation against transgene products after transplantation of GFP-transduced hematopoietic stem cells as indicated by stable GFP marking.