Adult transplantation tolerance induced by lentil lectin. III. Induction of transplantation tolerance by lentil lectin in mouse strain combinations with different H-2 disparities: tolerogenic effect of H-2D region antigens.

The survival time of skin allografts was investigated in 28 combinations of mouse strains differing at various loci, in adult recipients treated with lentil seed lectin (LCA). The recipients were given 1 mg of LCA daily (i.v. or i.p.) after transplantation of the skin graft. The immunosuppressive effect of LCA was generally inversely related to the conventional strength of the allotransplantation reaction, i.e. the rate of rejection of allografts on untreated recipients. In the case of H-2D antigenic disparities, the grafts usually survived for more than 100 days. The H-2A or H-2K disparity appeared to be relatively resistant to induction of tolerance by LCA treatment. The relative resistance of various H-2 antigens toward the induction of tolerance by LCA differs to some extent from that observed in experiments on the induction of neonatal tolerance by semiallogeneic lymphocytes as described in literature.