Cortisol and the Immune Response

Abstract

Michaelides and Coons¹ were the first to report the successful demonstration of a complete secondary immune response in vitro. They challenged fragments of lymph nodes from an immunized rabbit with the immunizing antigen and incubated the fragments in a serum-containing medium; the specific antibody appeared after several days. At that time it was, however, necessary to have a medium which contained serum. More recently, Ambrose² has discovered that cortisol and insulin can replace the normal serum in the tissue-culture medium for the demonstration of the specific secondary immune response in vitro. Halliday and Garvey³ have extended these investigations to ascertain what part is played by the antigen and by the cortisol in eliciting the secondary immune response. They found that in the presence of cortisol sulphur-35-labelled antigen was taken up from insulin-fortified Eagle's medium by the sensitized tissue fragments. The labelled antigen was bound firmly, and released only when antibody appeared in the culture fluids. These experiments suggested that cortisol influenced the uptake of antigen by lymphoid cells.