Thymic dendritic cells traffic to thymi of allogeneic recipients and prolong graft survival.

We have demonstrated that murine thymic dendritic cells (DCs) isolated from donor mice have the capability to home to thymi of fully allogeneic recipients after intravenous injections, where they induce T cell deletions and prolong donor-strain airway and skin graft survival. In contrast, infused splenic DCs immigrated poorly to thymi, and did not affect graft survival. These findings suggest that preferential homing may be an important mechanistic difference among subpopulations of DCs that mediate immune functions and illustrate a novel methodology that could have utility for induction of specific immunologic nonreactivity to allografts, or other disease-associated antigens.