107 “IN VITRO” PROLIFERATION OF ACTIVATED LYMPHOCYTES INFILTRATING SMALL BOWEL IN COELIAC DISEASE

Abstract

The ability of interleukin 2 (IL-2) to stimulate cellular division of activated T lymphocytes allows to propagate “in vitro” the T cells infiltrating inflammatory tissues. We developed a system that allows to propagate relevant amounts of activated T lymphocytes from minute fragments of peroral small bowel biopsies performed for diagnostic purposes. In preliminary experiments on three different patients with gluten enteropathy on a gluten containing diet, the culture of bioptic tissue in the presence of IL-2 allowed us to recover as many as 10 lymphocytes. The evaluation of surface markers with monoclonal antibodies showed that these cells were virtually all T Lymphocytes (CD3+): the two different T cells subsets, CD4+ (helper / inducer) and CD8+ (suppressor / cytotoxic) were almost equally represented in the two patients challenged with gluten while in the third one, who was at the first diagnostic biopsy, there was a marked predominance of CD8+ cells. This difference could be related to the different phases of the disease in the patients examined. The relevant numbers of cells obtained with our experimental procedure can be used in functional assays to further investigate the pathogenesis of coeliac disease.