IL-17 Gene Ablation Does Not Impact Treg-Mediated Suppression of Graft-Versus-Host Disease after Bone Marrow Transplantation

Abstract

Regulatory T cell (Treg) immunotherapy is a promising strategy for the treatment of graft rejection responses and autoimmune disorders. Our and other laboratories have shown that the transfer of highly purified CD4+CD25+Foxp3+ natural Treg can prevent lethal graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation across both major and minor histocompatibility barriers. However, recent evidence suggests that the Treg suppressive phenotype can become unstable, a phenomenon that can culminate in Treg conversion into IL-17–producing cells. We hypothesized that the intense proinflammatory signals released during an ongoing alloreaction might redirect a fraction of the transferred Treg to the Th17 cell fate, thereby losing immunosuppressive potential. We therefore sought to evaluate the impact of Il17 gene ablation on Treg stability and immunosuppressive capacity in a major MHC mismatch model. We show that although Il17 gene ablation results in a mildly enhanced Treg immunosuppressive ability in vitro, such improvement is not observed when IL-17–deficient Treg are used for GVHD suppression in vivo. Similarly, when we selectively blocked IL-1 signaling in Treg, that was shown to be necessary for Th17 conversion, we did not detect any improvement on Treg-mediated GVHD suppressive ability in vivo. Furthermore, upon ex vivo reisolation of transferred wild-type Treg, we detected little or no Treg-mediated IL-17 production upon GVHD induction. Our results indicate that blocking Th17 conversion does not affect the GVHD suppressive ability of highly purified natural Treg in vivo, suggesting that IL-17 targeting is not a valuable strategy to improve Treg immunotherapy after hematopoietic cell transplantation.