Implication of follicular dendritic cells in prion diseases

In prion diseases, FDCs seem to be the major sites of extraneuronal cellular prion protein (PrPc) expression and the principal sites of the infectious agent (PrPres) accumulation in lymph organs.

Two ways of research has been considered: firstly, a new monoclonal antibody directed against bovine follicular dendritic cells (FDC-B1) developed in our laboratory has been characterised. We have shown that the antigen detected by FDC-B1 is expressed exclusively on FDCs surface of ruminants’ lymphoid organs. This protein seems to be a membrane glycoprotein of more or less 28 kDa whose sequence will be soon under determination. FDC-B1 will be a precious tool to detect FDC implication in scrapie infected sheep and in bovine spongiform affected cows.

Secondly, the expression of PrPc isoforms has been analysed on bovine FDC depleted and enriched fractions and has been compared to bovine brain extracts. We demonstrated variation in the PrPc patterns of glycosylation between bovine FCD depleted and enriched cell populations. Moreover, glycosyl residues seemed to be different between immune and neuronal PrPc. As interaction of PrPc and PrPres appears to be a crucial pathogenic step promoted by homology, variation in PrPc glycoforms could explain the absence of infectivity in most bovine lymph organs affected by bovine spongiform encephalopathy.