An age-related loss of the isogeneic barrier to the successful passive cell transfer of antimicrobial immunity in mice.

The results of this study show that an isogeneic barrier to the successful adoptive immunotherapy of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infected mice is progressively lost as these animals age. This was shown in this study by the demonstration that increasing levels of transferred acquired specific resistance could be conferred on normal old recipients of greater than 22 months of age, whereas in young recipients such transfers were unsuccessful without the prior exposure of recipients to sublethal levels of whole-body ionizing gamma irradiation. These data indicate that strategies of adoptive immunotherapy in the elderly may not have to overcome the age-related isogeneic physiological barrier to this procedure.