PROTECTION AGAINST RUNTING BY SPECIFIC 



TREATMENT OF NEWBORN MICE, FOLLOWED 



BY INCREASED TOLERANCE* 



Guy A. Voisin and Radslav Kinsky 



Centre d* Immuno-Pathohgie de V Association Claude Bernard,^ 

 Hopital Saint-Antoine, Paris 



When a foetal or newborn mouse of a given inbred strain 

 receives intravenously injected spleen cells, from an adult 

 homologous mouse, the young mouse is modified in such a way 

 that it often becomes unable to reject a tissue graft from the 

 homologous donor strain. This outstanding phenomenon of 

 specific acquired tolerance to hving cells is unfortunately often 

 impaired by the appearance, during the second and third week 

 following the treatment, of a typical disease known as *'runting 

 syndrome" or "homologous disease" which is thought to be the 

 consequence of an immunological reaction of the immuno- 

 logically competent injected cells against the vulnerable homo- 

 logous host. This regrettable phenomenon raises practical and 

 theoretical problems. 



From a practical point of view it precludes the application to 

 the human species of the methods used to induce acquired toler- 

 ance to living cells, until homologous disease can be completely 

 mastered. This can be done in two ways: one is to protect the 

 newborn by injecting it with antiserum specifically directed 

 against the injected cells (Siskind and Thomas, 1959). Unfor- 

 tunately this procedure results in the destruction of the injected 



* This work was supported by U.S.P.H.S. grant E. 3555. 

 t Director, Raoul Kourilsky. 



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