Allo-specific T-cells encoding for viral IL-10 exert strong immunomodulatory effects in vitro but fail to prevent graft rejection.

Recently, we demonstrated the capacity of allo-specific gene-engineered T lymphocytes as transport vehicle for therapeutic transgenes into allografts. In this study, the influence of viral IL-10 as therapeutic transgene was addressed. Lewis rat T-cell lines specific for DA rat alloantigens were engineered to express vIL-10 by using a retroviral gene expression system.