PHYSIOLOGICAL REGULATION OF IMMUNITY - DIFFERENTIAL REGULATORY CONTRIBUTIONS OF PERIPHERAL AND CENTRAL LYMPHON COMPARTMENTS

Specific adaptive immunity confers an important survival advantage to organisms an observation that is clearly evident when either of the major effector limbs of the immune response is defective. It would seem that adaptive host responses can be specifically manipulated dependent upon the lymphon compartment, which is exposed to antigen coupled to membrane. Reversing the normal order of immune processing and activation from peripheral to central by the administration i.v. of large amounts of antigen coupled to syngeneic membranes it may be possible to generate therapeutically useful specific suppressor cells. Analogously, specific effector cells may be generated peripherally by administering antigen-coupled membrane perhaps as appropriately coupled liposomes. Clearly the ability to manipulate and address the functional divisions of the immune system in an antigen-specific fashion would be a powerful addition to known clinical therapeutic regimens.