Immune tolerance
Immune tolerance, also known as immunological tolerance or immunotolerance, is the immune system's state of unresponsiveness to substances or tissues that would otherwise trigger an immune response. It arises from prior exposure to a specific antigen and contrasts the immune system's conventional role in eliminating foreign antigens. Depending on the site of induction, tolerance is categorized as either central tolerance, occurring in the thymus and bone marrow, or [|peripheral tolerance], taking place in other tissues and lymph nodes. Although the mechanisms establishing central and peripheral tolerance differ, their outcomes are analogous, ensuring immune system modulation.
Immune tolerance is important for normal physiology and homeostasis. Central tolerance is crucial for enabling the immune system to differentiate between self and non-self antigens, thereby preventing autoimmunity. Peripheral tolerance plays a significant role in preventing excessive immune reactions to environmental agents, including allergens and gut microbiota. Deficiencies in either central or peripheral tolerance mechanisms can lead to autoimmune diseases, with conditions such as systemic lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 diabetes, autoimmune polyendocrine syndrome type 1, and immunodysregulation polyendocrinopathy enteropathy X-linked syndrome as examples. Furthermore, disruptions in immune tolerance are implicated in the development of asthma, atopy, and inflammatory bowel disease.
In the context of pregnancy, immune tolerance is vital for the gestation of genetically distinct offspring, as it moderates the alloimmune response sufficiently to prevent miscarriage.
However, immune tolerance is not without its drawbacks. It can permit the successful infection of a host by pathogenic microbes that manage to evade immune elimination. Additionally, the induction of peripheral tolerance within the local microenvironment is a strategy employed by many cancers to avoid detection and destruction by the host's immune system.
Historical background
The phenomenon of immune tolerance was first described by Ray D. Owen in 1945, who noted that dizygotic twin cattle sharing a common placenta also shared a stable mixture of each other's red blood cells, and retained that mixture throughout life. Although Owen did not use the term immune tolerance, his study showed the body could be tolerant of these foreign tissues. This observation was experimentally validated by Leslie Brent, Rupert E. Billingham and Peter Medawar in 1953, who showed by injecting foreign cells into fetal or neonatal mice, they could become accepting of future grafts from the same foreign donor. However, they were not thinking of the immunological consequences of their work at the time: as Medawar explains:We did not set out with the idea in mind of studying the immunological consequences of the phenomenon described by Owen; on the contrary, we had been goaded by Dr. H.P. Donald into trying to devise a foolproof method of distinguishing monozygotic from dizygotic twins....
However, these discoveries, and the host of allograft experiments and observations of twin chimerism they inspired, were seminal for the theories of immune tolerance formulated by Sir Frank McFarlane Burnet and Frank Fenner, who were the first to propose the deletion of self-reactive lymphocytes to establish tolerance, now termed clonal deletion. Burnet and Medawar were ultimately credited for "the discovery of acquired immune tolerance" and shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1960.
Definitions and usage
In their Nobel Lecture, Medawar and Burnet define immune tolerance as "a state of indifference or non-reactivity towards a substance that would normally be expected to excite an immunological response." Other more recent definitions have remained more or less the same. The 8th edition of Janeway's Immunobiology defines tolerance as "immunologically unresponsive...to another's tissues."Immune tolerance encompasses the range of physiological mechanisms by which the body reduces or eliminates an immune response to particular agents. It is used to describe the phenomenon underlying discrimination of self from non-self, suppressing allergic responses, allowing chronic infection instead of rejection and elimination, and preventing attack of fetuses by the maternal immune system.
Typically, a change in the host, not the antigen, is implied. Though some pathogens can evolve to become less virulent in host-pathogen coevolution, tolerance does not refer to the change in the pathogen but can be used to describe the changes in host physiology. Immune tolerance also does not usually refer to artificially induced immunosuppression by corticosteroids, lymphotoxic chemotherapy agents, sublethal irradiation, etc. Nor does it refer to other types of non-reactivity such as immunological paralysis. In the latter two cases, the host's physiology is handicapped but not fundamentally changed.
Immune tolerance is formally differentiated into central or peripheral; however, alternative terms such as "natural" or "acquired" tolerance have at times been used to refer to establishment of tolerance by physiological means or by artificial, experimental, or pharmacological means. These two methods of categorization are sometimes confused, but are not equivalent—central or peripheral tolerance may be present naturally or induced experimentally. This difference is important to keep in mind.
Central tolerance
refers to the tolerance established by deleting autoreactive lymphocyte clones before they develop into fully immunocompetent cells. It occurs during lymphocyte development in the thymus and bone marrow for T and B lymphocytes, respectively. In these tissues, maturing lymphocytes are exposed to self-antigens presented by medullary thymic epithelial cells and thymic dendritic cells, or bone marrow cells. Self-antigens are present due to endogenous expression, importation of antigen from peripheral sites via circulating blood, and in the case of thymic stromal cells, expression of proteins of other non-thymic tissues by the action of the transcription factor AIRE.Those lymphocytes that have receptors that bind strongly to self-antigens are removed by induction of apoptosis of the autoreactive cells, or by induction of anergy, a state of non-activity. Weakly autoreactive B cells may also remain in a state of immunological ignorance where they simply do not respond to stimulation of their B cell receptor. Some weakly self-recognizing T cells are alternatively differentiated into natural regulatory T cells, which act as sentinels in the periphery to calm down potential instances of T cell autoreactivity.
The deletion threshold is much more stringent for T cells than for B cells since T cells alone can cause direct tissue damage. Furthermore, it is more advantageous for the organism to let its B cells recognize a wider variety of antigen so it can produce antibodies against a greater diversity of pathogens. Since the B cells can only be fully activated after confirmation by more self-restricted T cells that recognize the same antigen, autoreactivity is held in check.
This process of negative selection ensures that T and B cells that could initiate a potent immune response to the host's own tissues are eliminated while preserving the ability to recognize foreign antigens. It is the step in lymphocyte education that is key for preventing autoimmunity. Lymphocyte development and education is most active in fetal development but continues throughout life as immature lymphocytes are generated, slowing as the thymus degenerates and the bone marrow shrinks in adult life.
Peripheral tolerance
develops after T and B cells mature and enter the peripheral tissues and lymph nodes. It is established by a number of partly overlapping mechanisms that mostly involve control at the level of T cells, especially CD4+ helper T cells, which orchestrate immune responses and give B cells the confirmatory signals they need in order to produce antibodies.Inappropriate reactivity toward normal self-antigen that was not eliminated in the thymus can occur, since the T cells that leave the thymus are relatively but not completely safe. Some will have receptors that can respond to self-antigens that:
- are present in such high concentration outside the thymus that they can bind to "weak" receptors.
- the T cell did not encounter in the thymus.
Appropriate reactivity toward certain antigens can also be quieted by induction of tolerance after repeated exposure, or exposure in a certain context. In these cases, there is a differentiation of naïve CD4+ helper T cells into induced Treg cells in the peripheral tissue or nearby lymphoid tissue. This differentiation is mediated by IL-2 produced upon T cell activation, and TGF-β from any of a variety of sources, including tolerizing dendritic cells, other antigen presenting cells, or in certain conditions surrounding tissue.
Treg cells are not the only cells that mediate peripheral tolerance. Other regulatory immune cells include T cell subsets similar to but phenotypically distinct from Treg cells, including TR1 cells that make IL-10 but do not express Foxp3, TGF-β-secreting TH3 cells, as well as other less well-characterized cells that help establish a local tolerogenic environment. B cells also express CD22, a non-specific inhibitor receptor that dampens B cell receptor activation. A subset of B regulatory cells that makes IL-10 and TGF-β also exists. Some DCs can make Indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase that depletes the amino acid tryptophan needed by T cells to proliferate and thus reduce responsiveness. DCs also have the capacity to directly induce anergy in T cells that recognize antigen expressed at high levels and thus presented at steady-state by DCs. In addition, FasL expression by immune privileged tissues can result in activation-induced cell death of T cells.