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Transgenic plants expressing autoantigens fed to mice to induce oral immune tolerance

Nature Medicine volume 3, pages 793–796 (1997)Cite this article

Abstract

Oral administration of protein can induce antigen-specific immune hyporesponsiveness1. However, the utility of oral tolerance to autoantigens in the treatment of autoimmune diseases may be limited when candidate autoantigens cannot be produced by conventional systems in quantities sufficient for clinical studies. Plants may be ideally suited for this purpose, as they can synthesize, glycosylate and assemble mammalian proteins to provide huge quantities of relatively low cost soluble proteins2. Furthermore, edible transgenic plants could provide a simple and direct method of autoantigen delivery for oral tolerance. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine whether a transgenic plant expression system was capable of synthesizing the diabetes-associated autoantigen, glutamic acid decar-boxylase (GAD)3,4 in an immunogenic form and whether the oral administration of an autoantigen expressed by a plant could directly induce protective immune responses in a mouse model of diabetes. We show that a GAD-expressing transgenic plant, given as a dietary supplement, inhibits the development of diabetes in the non-obese diabetic (NOD) mouse.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Transplantation Immunobiology Group, John P. Robarts Research Institute, and Siebens-Drake Research Institute, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada, N6G 2V4

    S.-W. Ma, D.-L. Zhao, Z.-Q. Yin, R. Mukherjee, B. Singh, C.R. Stiller & A.M. Jevnikar

  2. Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada, N6A 5C1

    B. Singh, H.-Y. Qin & A.M. Jevnikar

  3. Department of Medicine, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada, N6A 5C1

    C.R. Stiller & A.M. Jevnikar

  4. London Health Science Centre — University Campus, 339 Windermere Road, London, Ontario, Canada, N6A 5A5

    A.M. Jevnikar

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  1. S.-W. Ma
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Ma, SW., Zhao, DL., Yin, ZQ. et al. Transgenic plants expressing autoantigens fed to mice to induce oral immune tolerance. Nat Med 3, 793–796 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm0797-793

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