Association of proteoglycan and vit. D3: therapeutic effect on experimental arthritis

• Grant number: 12/00605-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: March 01, 2012
• End date: December 31, 2012
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Immunology - Applied Immunology
• Principal Investigator: Alexandrina Sartori
• Grantee: Laís Calissi Brisolla Tavares
• Host Institution: Instituto de Biociências (IBB). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Botucatu. Botucatu , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic inflammatory disease that affects the joints. The majority of the approved therapies for this and other autoimmunes pathologies are based on global immunosupression, which increases susceptibility to infections agents. The general objective of this project is to evaluate if the immunization with proteoglycan (PG) in the presence of vitD3 is tolerogenic and also therapeutic in experimental arthritis. Old BALB/c femmale mice immunized with PG will be used as an experimental model. Initially the animals will be immunized with different doses of PG in the presence of vitD3 to establish the tolerogenic dose. The most tolerogenic condition will be used to treat mice during the pre-clinic phase, i.e., animals with high levels of anti-PG antibodies but with no clinical manifestations. Therapeutic efficacy will be evaluated by arthritis incidence, disease clinical score and histopathological analysis. The possible immunomodulatory mechanism will be investigated by the profile of cytokines produced by spleen cells. (AU)