Intrathymic transplantation of young, engraftable thymic epithelial cells promotes the growth and regeneration of the aging thymus (TRAN1P.932)

Abstract

Abstract The thymus reaches its maximum size early in life and then begins to shrink, producing fewer T cells with increasing age. This thymic decline is thought to contribute to age-related T cell lymphopenias and hinder T cell recovery following bone marrow transplantation. While several cellular and molecular processes have been implicated in age-related thymic involution, their relative contributions are not known. Using heterochronic parabiosis, we observe that young circulating factors are not sufficient to drive regeneration of the aged thymus. In contrast, we find that resupplying young, engraftable thymic epithelial cells to an aged or defective thymus leads to thymic regrowth and renewed T cell production. Intrathymic transplantation and in vitro colony forming assays reveal that the engraftment and proliferative capacities of thymic epithelial cells diminish early in life, whereas the receptivity of the thymus to thymic epithelial cell engraftment remains relatively constant with age. These results support a model in which thymic growth and subsequent involution are driven by cell intrinsic changes in the proliferative capacity of thymic epithelial cells, and further show that young thymic epithelial cells can directly drive aged thymic regeneration.