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Updated: Sep 27, 2026
Bone Marrow Transplantation Platform to Investigate the Role of Dendritic Cells in Graft-versus-Host Disease
Published on: March 17, 2020
Origin and subset distribution of peripheral blood dendritic cells in patients with chronic graft-versus-host disease
Fiona J Clark1, Lisa Freeman, Andrzej Dzionek
1Department of Haematology, Institute of Cancer Studies, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK.
Background:
After allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, donor T cells interact with an antigen-presenting cell environment that is distorted in number, level of activation, and origin. The role of antigen presentation in the development of chronic graft-versus host disease (cGVHD) is unknown.
Methods:
The number and origin of peripheral blood immature myeloid (CD19- CD1c+) and plasmacytoid (BDCA-2+) dendritic cells (DCs) was determined in 30 patients at more than 100 days after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.
Results:
Patients with cGVHD had significantly higher plasmacytoid DC numbers than individuals without this complication (9.1+/-2.0 x 10(6)/L versus 3.8+/-0.6 x 10(6)/L, =0.025). Chimerism studies demonstrated that DCs in patients with cGVHD were exclusively of donor origin, whereas persistence of host DCs was observed in some control patients.
Conclusions:
The antigen-presenting cell environment in patients with cGVHD, as represented by immature blood DCs, is of donor origin but distorted in terms of subset distribution.
