Acute allograft rejection is a serious and life-threatening complication of organ transplantation. Th17 cells induced inflammation has been described to play an important role in allograft rejection. Since there is a plenty of evidence indicating that transcriptional factor BATF regulates the differentiation of Th17 and follicular T helper cells both in vitro and in vivo, we investigated whether is BATF involved in acute rejection and allograft survival by injecting lentivirus containing BATF shRNA through tail vein before the cardiac transplantation operation. We found that the allograft survival time of the mice treated with BATF shRNA was significantly prolonged compared with that of negative shRNA treated group and the control group. Further pathological analysis revealed that the BATF shRNA treatment group had significantly lower rejection degree than the negative shRNA group, while there was no significant difference between the negative shRNA group and the control group. Furthermore, flow cytometry analysis and quantitative polymerase chain reaction and enzyme-linked immuno sorbent assay were used to determine the proportion of T helper cells, the expression of specific transcription factor and the inflammatory cytokines respectively. Data showed that BATF regulated Th17 and Treg responses during allograft rejection. And BATF inhibition led to reduction of the expression level of Rorγ-t and enhancement of the Foxp-3. In addition, cytokines IL-17A and IL-4 were found decreased. This may indicate BATF as a novel therapy target for treatment of acute allograft rejection.
Keywords: Acute allograft rejection; BATF; Th17; heterotopic cardiac transplantation; lentiviral vectors; shRNA.