Earticle

Xenotransplantation is proposed as a solution to the problem of organ shortage. However, transplantation of xenogeneic organs induces an antigen-antibody reaction in α-1,3-gal structure that are not present in humans and primates, and thus complement is also activated and organs die within minutes or hours. In this study, we used FasL gene, which is involved in the immune response of NK cell, and US11, which suppresses MHC Class I cell membrane surface expression, to inhibit cell mediated rejection in the interspecific immunity rejection, and also hDAF(CD55) was introduced to confirm the response to C3 complement. These genes were tranfeced into Korean native pig fetal fibroblasts using pCAGGS vector. And cytotoxicity of NK cell and human complement was confirmed in each cell line. The US11 inhibited the cytotoxicity of NK cell and, in addition, the simultaneous expression of US11 and Fas ligand showed excellent suppress to T-lymphocyte cytotoxicity, hDAF showed weak resistance to cytotoxicity of natural killer cell but not in CD8+ CTLs. Cytotoxicity study with human complement showed that hDAF was effective for reducing complement reaction. In this studies have demonstrated that each gene is effective in reducing immune rejection.