Theoretical models for T-cell vaccination

T cell vaccination (TCV) is a term for a whole collection of phenomena in which the injection of T cells provides protection against autoimmunity. Vaccination with T cells has been investigated for several autoimmune diseases, including experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis, adjuvant arthritist and insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus. Generally, there are two ways to vaccinate. The first is to inject activated autoreactive T lymphocytes. To prevent these T cells from inducing the autoimmune disease, they are either injected in a low concentration, or they are attenuated. The second way is to vaccinate with a clone of T cells that recognizes the autoreactive clone. Both vaccinations provide protection against subsequent induction of autoimmune disease. We propose here a mathematical model that (i) can account for both observations, and (ii) suggests an important qualitative difference between them