# Cell therapy for GvHD

> **NIH NIH R21** · LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO · 2024 · $115,000

## Abstract

Abstract.
Hematologic malignancies are often treated with allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT).
However, HSCT is complicated by graft-vs-host disease (GvHD), a severe, potentially lethal complication
initiated when donor alloreactive T cells attack host cells and organs. Despite the administration of prophylactic
regimens for aGVHD as standard pre-transplantation therapy, up to 60% of these patients develop aGVHD of
grade II or higher, and require additional immunosuppressive intervention. Thus, there is an urgent need to
improve pre-transplantation therapies to prevent aGVHD. We identified a probiotic exopolysaccharide (EPS)
that induces tolerogenic dendritic cells (DCs) that inhibit T cell proliferation, and we found that EPS-treated
human DCs (EPS-DCs) both inhibited T cell proliferation in mixed lymphocyte reactions, and significantly
increased survival of humanized NSG-HLA-A2 mice after transplantation with human peripheral blood
mononuclear cells (hPBMC). The data indicate that a cell-based therapy using EPS-DCs can mitigate aGvHD,
and the goal of this grant is to optimize the EPS-DC dosage for maximum protection from GvHD, and to
determine the molecular mechanism by which these EPS-DCs inhibit proliferation of alloreactive T cells both in
vitro and in vivo. These studies will provide a novel cell-based therapy for preventing GvHD in patients
receiving HSCT. This cell therapy will be translatable to humans because large numbers of EPS-DCs can be
generated and frozen in bulk and used as “off the shelf” treatment, for all patients, independent of MHC types.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10989225
- **Project number:** 1R21AI180555-01A1
- **Recipient organization:** LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO
- **Principal Investigator:** Katherine L. Knight
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $115,000
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2024-05-08 → 2026-03-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10989225

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10989225, Cell therapy for GvHD (1R21AI180555-01A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10989225. Licensed CC0.

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