Related Experiment Video
Updated: Sep 28, 2026
Intubation-mediated Intratracheal (IMIT) Instillation: A Noninvasive, Lung-specific Delivery System
Published on: November 17, 2014
Strain-dependent effect of nasal instillation of antigen on the immune response in mice
Marco E F Melo1, Claudia Raja Gabaglia, Kamal D Moudgil
1Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA. eli@liai.org
Background:
Nasal instillation is an effective method for inducing antigen-specific immune tolerance. However, it is not clear how a tolerization scheme established in one mouse strain will perform when used in a mouse of a different haplotype.
Objectives:
To compare the antigen-specific recall responses in four mouse strains--BALB/c, C57BL/6, NOD, and B10.PL--that were pretreated nasally with 50 micrograms of hen egg-white lysozyme prior to parenteral immunization with homologous antigen.
Methods:
Mice were nasally treated with a prototype antigen, HEL, and then immunized with the same antigen emulsified in complete Freund's adjuvant. Spleens and lymph nodes were assayed for T cell proliferation measured by tritiated thymidine incorporation. Cytokine production was measured using ELISPOT assay. Serum antibody response to HEL was measured using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay.
Results:
Proliferative recall responses to HEL in B10.PL, C57BL/6, and BALB/c were greatly reduced compared to control mice, but non-obese diabetic mice were resistant to the tolerization regime. Despite their susceptibility to nasally induced suppression, the mechanisms responsible for tolerance induction differed in BALB/c and C57BL/6 mice.
Conclusions:
Our findings demonstrate that while mucosal contacts with specific antigen consistently affect the outcome of subsequent exposure to the same antigen, the observed response will vary non-predictably, depending on the genetic background of the animal.
