Comparison of Antibody Responses Associated with the Transfer of Rabbit Lymph-Node, Peritoneal Exudate, and Thymus Cells

Abstract

A wide variety of cells and tissues have been implicated in antibody synthesis as a result of transplantation studies. The two most commonly employed transplantation schemes have been a) the transfer of tissues from recently immunized animals to in vitro cultures with the determination of antibodies which subsequently appear in the culture fluid; and b) the transfer of tissues or free cell suspensions from either normal or previously immunized donors to recipient animals and, after appropriate immunization of the transferred tissues, determination of antibodies which appear in the serum of the recipient. With the transfer to in vitro culture, antibody synthesis has been demonstrated by spleen, lymph node, bone marrow, lung, liver, and granuloma which developed about the site of injection of antigen in Freund adjuvant (1–12). In addition to these tissues, other sources of antibody formation revealed by transfers to recipient animals include omentum, intrascapular fat, thymus, Peyer's patches and even cornea (13–23).