Effects of portal venous administration with allogenic cells on renal allograft survival in the rat

The effects of administration of donor lymphocytes via portal vein (PV) on capacity of alloreactivity and renal allograft survival were investigated in comparison with those of intra-venous (IV) administration in the rats. Orthotopic renal transplantations were performed from Brown-Norway (BN, RT-In) to Lewis (LEW, RT-11) male rats. Donor lymphocytes were prepared from BN or third party DA(RT-1a) rat spleens and lymph nodes and injected via PV or IV to LEW rats on the day of transplantation (day 0). Untreated LEW hosts rejected BN grafts at 7.8 +/- 0.6 days (n = 10). IV administration of 1 x 10(8) BN cells to LEW rats caused a slight prolongation of BN graft survival to 10.4 +/- 3.1 days (n = 9, p less than 0.05), whereas PV inoculation of the same number of BN cells further prolonged graft survival to 28.9 +/- 9.2 days (n = 9, p less than 0.01). This effect was antigen specific; the administration of 1 x 10(8) third party DA cells via PV to LEW rats did not prolong survival of BN graft (MST = 7.4 +/- 0.8, n = 6). Serum from tolerant recipients had significant antigen specific suppressor effect (70.6%) on the MLR proliferative reaction of LEW responder cells toward donor BN cells, but not third party DA cells. Spleen cells from these recipients did not show any suppressive effect. These results demonstrate that PV administration of donor lymphoid cells to recipients results in rapidly inducible and long-lasting immunologic tolerance specific to donor alloantigen, and that this tolerance is mediated by serum factor induced in hosts, but not by suppressor cells.