The Therapeutic Effect of ICAM-1-Overexpressing Mesenchymal Stem Cells on Acute Graft-Versus-Host Disease.

Background/Aims: Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) do not readily migrate to appropriate sites, and this creates a major obstacle for their use in the treatment of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). Intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1) can guide the homing of various immune cells to the proper anatomical location within secondary lymphoid organs (SLOs), which are the major niches for generating immune responses or tolerance. MSCs rarely migrate to SLOs after intravenous infusion, and are constitutively low expression of ICAM-1. So in our previous work, ICAM-1 was engineered into a murine MSC line C3H10T1/2 by retrovirus transfection system (ICAM-1MSCs). Here, we hypothesized that ICAM-1(high)MSCs may significantly improve their immunomodulatory effect. Methods: We used different co-culture methods combined with real-time PCR and flow cytometry to evaluate ICAM-1(high)MSCs immunomodulatory effect on dendritic cells (DCs) and T cells in vitro and in vivo, MSCs were labeled with carboxyfluorescein diacetate succinimidylester (CFSE) to detect its distribution in mouse model. Results: Our in vitro analyses revealed ICAM-1 MSCs could suppress DCs maturation according to co-culture methods and suppress the T cell immune response according to the mixed lymphocyte response (MLR) and lymphoblast transformation test (LTT) tests. We found that infusion of ICAM-1h'ghMSCs potently prolonged the survival of GVHD mouse model. The infused ICAM 1h'oMSCs migrate to SLOs in vivo, and suppressed DCs maturation, suppressed CD4+ T cell differentiation to Thl cells, and increased the ratios of Treg cells. Conclusions: Taken together, these data demonstrate that ICAM-lhqhMSCs had an enhanced immunosuppressive effect on DCs and T cells, which may help explain the protective effect in a GVHD model. This exciting therapeutic strategy may improve the clinical efficacy of MSC-based therapy for GVHD. (C) 2018 The Author(s) Published by S Karger AG, Basel.