Continuously Proliferating Allospecific T-Cell Lines

Abstract

Studies of the function and specificity of thymus-derived lymphocytes (T cells) have met with increasing difficulties in recent years. The main reason is that T cells perform many different regulatory and effector functions in both cell-mediated and humoral immunity, each of which functions is apparently executed by a distinct subset of T cells. This was, for instance, shown by functional assays in which T cells primed for one function were assayed for other functions (Dennert, 1976). By combining functional assays with serological procedures, it was established that T cells with specific functions may display specific Ly antigens (Cantor and Boyse, 1975). This very promising approach to the separation of T-cell subsets has yet to be fully exploited, since it is difficult to prepare sufficient amounts of Ly-specific antibody for experimentation. But the recent success in preparing hybridomas producing specific antibody has opened new avenues for the preparation of unlimited amounts of specific antibodies (Köhler and Milstein, 1976). Other procedures aimed at enriching or even purifying T-cell populations have had little success. For instance, fractionation of T cells by adsorption to and elution from matrices to which antigen was attached have yielded disappointing results (Rubin and Wigzell, 1973), with the exception of alloantigen-specific cytotoxic T cells (Golstein et al., 1971).