Reconstitution of immune cell populations in multiple sclerosis patients after autologous stem cell transplantation

Multiple sclerosis is an inflammatory T-cell-mediated autoimmune disease. In a phase II clinical trial, high-dose immunosuppressive therapy combined with autologous CD34+ hematopoietic stem cell transplant resulted in 69.2% of subjects remaining disease-free without evidence of relapse, loss of neurological function or new MRI lesions through year 5 post-treatment. A combination of CyTOF mass cytometry and multi-parameter flow cytometry was used to explore the reconstitution kinetics of immune cell subsets in the periphery post HSCT and the impact of treatment on the phenotype of circulating T cells in this study population. Repopulation of immune cell subsets progressed similarly for all patients studied 2 years post therapy, regardless of clinical outcome. At month 2, monocytes and NK cells were proportionally more abundant, while CD4 T cells and B cells were reduced, relative to baseline. In contrast to the changes observed at earlier time points in the T cell compartment, B cells were proportionally more abundant and expansion in the proportion of naive B cells was observed 1 and 2 years post therapy. Within the T cell compartment, the proportion of effector memory and late effector subsets of CD4 and CD8 T cells was increased, together with transient increases in proportions of CD45RA- Tregs, and Th1 cells, and a decrease in Th17.1 cells. While none of the treatment effects studied correlated with clinical outcome, patients that remained healthy throughout the 5-year study had significantly higher absolute numbers of memory CD4 and CD8 T cells in the periphery prior to stem cell transplantation. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.