The Effect of ADAMTS13 on Graft-Versus-Host Disease

Authors

Dan Li
Min Soon Cho
Ricardo Gonzalez-Delgado
Xiaowen Liang
Jing-Fei Dong
Miguel A Cruz
Qing Ma
Vahid Afshar-Kharghan

Publication Date

7-1-2024

Journal

Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine

Abstract

Allogeneic haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT) can potentially cure malignant blood disorders and benign conditions such as haemoglobinopathies and immunologic diseases. However, allo-HSCT is associated with significant complications. The most common and debilitating among them is graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). In GVHD, donor-derived T cells mount an alloimmune response against the recipient. The alloimmune response involves several steps, including recognition of recipient antigens, activation and proliferation of T cells in secondary lymphoid organs, and homing into GVHD-targeted organs. Adhesion molecules on T cells and endothelial cells mediate homing of T cells into lymphoid and non-lymphoid tissues. In this study, we showed that Von Willebrand factor (VWF), an adhesion molecule secreted by activated endothelial cells, plays an important role in mouse models of GVHD. We investigated the effect of the VWF-cleaving protease ADAMTS13 on GVHD. We found that ADAMTS13 reduced the severity of GVHD after bone marrow transplantation from C57BL6 donor to BALB/C recipient mice. A recombinant VWF-A2 domain peptide also reduced GVHD in mice. We showed that ADAMTS13 and recombinant VWF-A2 reduced the binding of T cells to endothelial cells and VWF in vitro, and reduced the number of T cells in lymph nodes, Peyer's patches and GVHD-targeted organs in vivo. We identified LFA-1 (αLβ2) as the binding site of VWF on T cells. Our results showed that blocking T-cell homing by ADAMTS13 or VWF-A2 peptide reduced the severity of the GVHD after allo-HSCT, a potentially novel method for treating and preventing GVHD.

Keywords

Graft vs Host Disease, Animals, ADAMTS13 Protein, Mice, Mice, Inbred BALB C, T-Lymphocytes, Mice, Inbred C57BL, von Willebrand Factor, Humans, Transplantation, Homologous, Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation, Disease Models, Animal, Bone Marrow Transplantation, Endothelial Cells

Comments

Supplementary Materials

PMID: 38963011