Journal article
Mitogen-activated Tasmanian devil blood mononuclear cells kill devil facial tumour disease cells
GK Brown, C Tovar, AA Cooray, A Kreiss, J Darby, JM Murphy, LM Corcoran, SS Bettiol, AB Lyons, GM Woods
Immunology and Cell Biology | Published : 2016
DOI: 10.1038/icb.2016.38
Abstract
Devil facial tumour disease (DFTD) is a transmissible cancer that has brought the host species, the Tasmanian devil, to the brink of extinction. The cancer cells avoid allogeneic immune recognition by downregulating cell surface major histocompatibility complex (MHC) I expression. This should prevent CD8 + T cell, but not natural killer (NK) cell, cytotoxicity. The reason why NK cells, normally reactive to MHC-negative cells, are not activated to kill DFTD cells has not been determined. The immune response of wild devils to DFTD, if it occurs, is uncharacterised. To investigate this, we tested 12 wild devils with DFTD, and found suggestive evidence of low levels of antibodies against DFTD ce..
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Awarded by Mazda Foundation
Funding Acknowledgements
This work was supported by funding from the Australian Research Council (LP0989727, LP130100218 and DP130100715), Dr Eric Guiler Tasmanian devil research grants, the Mazda Foundation, through fellowships from the National Health and Medical Research Council to LMC (637306) and the Australian Research Council to JMM (FT100100100). JMM and LMC acknowledge support from the Victorian State Government Operational Infrastructure Support Scheme and NHMRC IRIISS grant (9000220). We thank Tony Papenfuss and Sam Young for contributions to recombinant devil IL-2 expression construct design and preparation. We also thank Anne-Maree Pearse and Kate Swift of DPIPWE for the provision of DFT1 cell lines. We acknowledge the support of the Save the Tasmanian Devil Program. We are grateful for the expert care of the Tasmanian devils by the DPIPWE devil keepers and Ginny Ralph.