The immune system exists in a delicate equilibrium between inflammatory responses and tolerance. This unique feature allows the immune system to recognize and respond to potential threats in a controlled but normally limited fashion thereby preventing a destructive overreaction against healthy tissues. While the adaptive immune system was the major research focus concerning activation vs. toler...

UV exposure suppresses the immune response to a variety of microbial, fungal, and viral Ags. In addition, UV radiation is a complete carcinogen and the immune suppression induced by UV radiation is a major risk factor for skin cancer induction. In this study, we examined the mechanisms underlying the induction of immune suppression and tolerance induction by UV radiation. Transferring lymph nod...

Immune responses are suppressed in immunologically privileged sites, which may provide a unique opportunity to prolong allograft survival. However, it is unknown whether testicular immune privilege promotes transplantation tolerance. Mechanisms underlying immune privilege are also not well understood. Here we found that islet transplantation in the testis, an immunologically privileged site, ge...

Adult thymectomy prevents the development of suppressor T cells without impairing the induction of immunologic tolerance to the same antigenic determinant. This finding demonstrates that the cellular mechanisms underlying immune suppression and immune tolerance are different.

Cancer immunotherapy has proven to be challenging as it depends on overcoming multiple mechanisms that mediate immune tolerance to self-antigens. A growing understanding of immune tolerance has been the foundation for new approaches to cancer immunotherapy. Adoptive transfer of immune effectors such as antitumor mAb and chimeric antigen receptor T cells bypasses many of the mechanisms involved ...

Biologic drugs, including enzyme-replacement therapies, can elicit anti-drug Abs (ADA) that may interfere with drug efficacy and impact patient safety. In an effort to control ADA, we focused on identifying regimens of immune tolerance induction that may be readily available for clinical use. Data generated in both wild-type mice and a Pompe disease mouse model demonstrate that single-cycle, lo...

The eye is the prototypic immune-privileged organ. Its antigens were once believed to be expressed exclusively in the eye, which resides behind an efficient blood-organ barrier, and were believed to be unknown to the immune system. Self-tolerance to ocular components was therefore believed to be based not on immune tolerance but on immune ignorance. It is now known that the relationship between...

Spontaneous immune tolerance in mouse liver transplantation has always been a hotspot in transplantation-immune research. Recent studies revealed that regulatory T cells (Tregs), hepatic satellite cells and Kupffer cells play a potential role in spontaneous immune tolerance, however the precise mechanism of spontaneous immune tolerance is still undefined. By using Microarray Chips, we investiga...