5th EuropEan MolEcular IMagIng MEEtIng - ESMI

5th EuropEan MolEcular IMagIng MEEtIng – EMIM2010
Immune surveillance and autoimmunity: how encephalitogenic T cells enther their target organ
Odoardi F. .
Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, Germany
odoardi@neuro.mpg.de
Introduced in the immunological field in 2002
two-photon microscopy is the method of choice
for visualizing living cells in their anatomical
compartment because it allows to image deep
in the tissue with negligible phototoxicity and
photobleaching. We applied this technique in order
to visualize in living Lewis rat the fate of genetically
labeled MBP specific effector T cells in the menigeal
vessels during the initial phase of experimental
autoimmune encephalomyelitis, a classical model of
multiple sclerosis. We observed that the incoming
cells remained in close association with pial blood
vessels, crawling on surfaces within the outline of
the vessels. This behavior was specific to the CNS:
in peripheral organs, for example in peripheral
nerves, muscle or subcutaneous tissue, MBP T
cells mainly rolled along the inner surface of the
vessels. The crawling was completely abolished by
the treatment with anti VLA-4 and LFA-1 antibodies.
After diapedesis, the cells continued their scan on
the abluminal vascular surface and the underlying
leptomeningeal (pial) membrane. Here they
established contact with local meningeal phagocytes
and these interactions were crucial to induce the
production of proinflammatory and to trigger
tissue invasion.
EuropEan SocIEty for MolEcular IMagIng – ESMI
day1
ESMI Plenary Lecture 2 by Francesca Odoardi