HAPTEN-SPECIFIC IgE ANTIBODY RESPONSES IN MICE

Abstract

The present studies have established conditions for the demonstration of cooperative interactions between specific T and B lymphocyte populations in the development of IgE antibody responses in vivo in mice. This has been accomplished by utilizing a system which permits the successful adoptive transfer to irradiated recipients of DNP-specific secondary IgE responses with spleen cells from suitably primed syngeneic donor mice. Thus, adoptively transferred DNP-KLH or DNP-ASC-primed spleen cells produced high levels of anti-DNP antibodies of both IgE and IgG antibody classes in response to challenge with the appropriate homologous priming conjugate but failed to develop more than meager responses to the reciprocal heterologous conjugate. However, when spleen cells from donors primed to the second carrier were concomitantly transferred with hapten-primed lymphocytes, secondary IgE ant-DNP responses were consistently obtained upon challenge with the heterologous conjugate. Moreover, we have been able to elicit augmented primary IgE anti-DNP antibody responses to either DNP-ASC or DNP-KLH after adoptive transfer of spleen cells from donors primed only to the carrier, ASC or KLH, respectively.