Abstract
We here investigated the efficiency of autologous melanocyte transplantation of 23 vitiligo patients by focusing on perilesional skin homing CD8+ T lymphocytes, and studied the potential effect of dermal mesenchymal stem cells (DMSCs) on CD8+ T cell activities in vitro. Out of 23 patients with the autologous melanocyte transplantation, 12 patients (52.17%) had an excellent re-pigmentation, 6 patients (26.09%) had a good re-pigmentation, 5 patients (21.74%) had a fair or poor re-pigmentation. CD8+ T cells infiltrating was observed in the perilesional vitiligo area of all patients. Importantly, the efficiency of the transplantation was closely associated with skin-homing CD8+ T cell activities. The patients with high number of perilesional CD8+ T cells or high level of cytokines/chemokines were associated with poor re-pigmentation efficiency. For in-vitro experiments, we successfully isolated and characterized human DMSCs and skin-homing CD8+ T cells. We established DMSCs and CD8+ T cell co-culture system, where DMSCs possessed significant inhibitory effects against skin homing CD8+ T lymphocytes. DMSCs inhibited CD8+ T cells proliferation, induced them apoptosis and regulated their cytokines/chemokines production. Our results suggest that vitiligo patients’ autologous melanocytes transplantation efficiency might be predicted by perilesional skin-homing CD8+ T cell activities, and DMSCs might be used as auxiliary agent to improve transplantation efficacy.
Highlights
Vitiligo is an acquired skin de-pigmentation disorder characterized by the progressive development of skin areas without functional melanocytes
The bound antibody was detected by streptavidin-HRP (1:400, Dako Corporation, Carpinteria, CA) and antibody reactivity was detected by incubation with DAB substrate, according to the manufacturer’s instructions
The sections were counterstained with hematoxylin (Sigma) for 1 min at room temperature, and cover slips were mounted using Kaiser’s glycerol gelatin (Sigma)
Summary
Vitiligo is an acquired skin de-pigmentation disorder characterized by the progressive development of skin areas without functional melanocytes. Sustained ROS are able to induce melanocytes apoptosis [6]. The histological analysis of the perilesional margin surrounding the patients’ de-pigmented skin revealed infiltrating of activated T cells and other lymphocytes [8]. Further studies confirmed that these surrounding T cells were skin-homing, and were apparently cytotoxic to nearby melanocytes [9,10]. Melanocyte-specific antibodies were often observed in vitiligo patients’ serum [11] and in melanocyte-specific skin-homing cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) [12]. CTLs were shown to induce apoptosis of melanocytes in the non-lesional skin [13]. These studies confirmed the involvement of autoimmune T cells in the pathological mechanisms of vitiligo
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