[Assessment of lymphatic cells in natural and artificial allografts (author's transl)]

Transfer of "passenger lymphocytes" within a transplant initiates allogeneic rejection. As compared with peripheral lymphocytes, which show no different in vitro reaction, infiltrating cells from natural and artificial grafts are good stimulator, bad responder but powerful suppressor cells. These T-suppressor cells, which arose during rejection are enriched in the graft. The assumption is that the function of this relatively small number of lymphocytes is to suppress the local immunological rejection mechanisms. They cannot inhibit the proliferation of peripheral cytotoxic cells.