| Serving as an immunologically privileged tissue, the decidua and its components,especially decidual leueoeytes ,play essential roles in pregnancy maintenance. The decidual leucocyte population has been a centre of interest for the understanding of the mechanism that might control maternal inunune responses in successful pregnancy. This leucoeyte population is composed of decidual naturalkiller cells, T cells and major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class II- positive antigen-presenting cells (APCs) which are thought to be mainly macrophages and dendritic cells (DCs). These immunocytes can acquire unique features or phenotypes in different tissue microenvironments, and may play a prominent role of immune responses and decide whether immunity or tolerance develops.DCs and macrophages are very important APCs. Macrophages remain relatively constant in placenta throughout gestation and infiltrate into embryo implantation areas abundantly, which indicated that macrophages may be related to pregnancy. We got a high purity of CD14+ macrophages by MACS. APC play a pivotal role in immunoloregulation.Dendritic cells is the most potent professional antigen-presenting cells in vitro. From the research of the past decade, it was confirmed that the maternal-fetal interface contained DCs and DCs may play a pivotal role in immunological tolerance to fetal antigen and may take part in the activation of parturition. However, the mechanisms of immunological tolerance to fetal antigen and the activation of parturition are unknown. So it is important to study the characteristics of macrophages and DCs.We established the transendothelial trafficking model, which imitated the process of monocyte-macrophages moving and developing into DCs in vivo. By this transendothelial trafficking model, we induced decidual monocyte-macrophages development into DCs from different gestational ages.The results showed that decidual macrophages, from full term placental tissues, expressed low levels of CD86,HLA-DR and CD206. The expressions of CD80 and CD83 were not detected. These macrophages produced low levels of IL-10 and TGF-βin supernatants. The ability of stimulating the proliferation of allogenic T cells was also low. Co-cultured decidual macrophages and stimulated allogenic T cells produced low IL-10 and high TGF-βcompared with control. On the other hand, decidual macrophages from midtrimester pregnancy placenta expressed higher CD80,CD86,HLA-DR,CD83 and CD206. The levels of IL-10 and TGF-βin supernatants were higher than their from full-term counterpart. The ability of stimulating the proliferation of allogenic T cells was similarly low. Level of TGF-βproduced by co-cultured T cells was almost same as that from full-term macrophage-stimulating T cells. But these stimulated T cells produced higher IL-10. Thus we concluded that monocyte-macrophages separated from different gestational ages placental tissues are different in biological characteristics. Our results suggest that IL-10 may be related to the function of decidual macrophages at mid pregnancy.After cultured in the transendothelial trafficking model for 48h, the DC-like cells which derived from the full term placental monocyte-macrophages displayed morphological characteristics.They expressed higher level of CD83,CD80, CD86 and HLA-DR, with a low level of TGF-βbut no IL-10. They stimulated the proliferation of allogenic T cells and leaded to a higher percentage of IFN-γ-producing cells. However, DC-like cells, from midtrimester placental tissues, expressed low level of CD83,CD80 and CD86, especially CD80, secreted high levels of IL-10, TGF-β, stimulated the proliferation of a lower percentage of allogenic T cells and leaded to a higher percentage of IL-10-producing cells. Besides, cytokines from two kinds of DC-like cells were different. Thus, we concluded that monocyte-macrophages separated from different gestational ages placental tissues could be induced into DCs with different function in the transendothelial trafficking model.
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