development and use a novel combined in-vivo and in-vitro assay for anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive agents

contact hypersensitivity (chs) mouse model induced by 2, 4-dinitrofluorobenzene (dnfb) is thought to be a t helper 1 (th1)-dominant response and used for investigating anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive agents. however, it is hardly used for screening large-scale drugs because of the large number of animals and complex mechanisms involved in-vivo. in this study, we focused on whether t lymphocytes from chs mouse model could maintain the state of immune response in-vitro and explored a suitable time for drugs screening. the results showed that cd4+ t cells of chs mice were higher compared with those in normal group. the expression of t-bet and gata3 showed a th1 shift and the levels of interleukin (il)-2 and il-4 also showed similar trend. furthermore, il-6 produced by t lymphocytes from chs mice had a high level too. then, we detected the effects of dexamethasone (dex), cyclosporine a (csa) and mycophenolate mofetil (mmf) on t lymphocytes in-vitro, and the data displayed that these immunosuppressive drugs could all inhibit the proliferation of t lymphocytes significantly. these findings suggested that t lymphocytes from chs mice could mimic a similar immune response in-vitro, and it’s also a suitable method for screening anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive agents.