Studies on the Transfer of Lymph Node Cells

Abstract

Summary Cells of the popliteal and axillary lymph nodes of uninjected rabbits were incubated in vitro with dysentery bacilli. The lymph node cells were then washed and transferred to fresh rabbits which had undergone x-ray irradiation 24 hours earlier. Such recipients developed agglutinins to dysentery bacilli on the fourth day after transfer. Recipients of heated aliquots of the same cell suspensions did not develop antibody, generally, until after the eighth day after transfer. These results were obtained with suspensions of dysentery bacilli in the range of 1 to .001%. Similar results were obtained when lymph node cells from uninjected rabbits were injected intravenously into irradiated recipients, which were then injected with dysentery bacilli. The numbers of dysentery bacilli present after manipulation in cell suspensions which had been incubated with various dilutions of suspensions of dysentery bacilli were estimated by setting up typical cell-transfer experiments with living cultures of Shigella paradysenteriae. Aliquots of the various preparations were plated in tryptose agar, and the colonies which appeared were counted. Irradiated rabbits were injected with similar numbers of alcohol-treated bacilli. It was found that the dose of irradiation was sufficient to suppress active formation of antibodies in the range in which the cell-transfer experiments were performed. Typhoid bacilli were injected subcutaneously into all rabbits injected with lymph node cells. Nonirradiated recipients responded with the formation of typhoid agglutinins. Irradiated recipients of heated lymph node cells, or no cells at all, did not generally develop agglutinins during the first 12 days. Irradiated recipients of untreated cells, however, developed agglutinins during the first week after transfer in over 70% of the cases. Irradiated recipients of untreated splenic cells incubated in vitro with dysentery bacilli also developed agglutinins on the fourth day after transfer. Transfer of cells of the thymus similarly incubated did not lead to the appearance of dysentery agglutinins.