B cells in the intestine

[darren at indy.bio.uts.edu.au]

To all the mammalian immunologists out there,

 I am studying the possibilities of making oral vaccines for fish
farming, and have discovered the following
 phenomenon with a protein antigen:

 -when injected IP into fish, you get a serum Ab response

 -when you feed the antigen, there is no serum Ab response; however
there *is* a serum Ab response to a
 hapten attached to the antigen

 -if you prime the fish with an IP injection of antigen (without
 adjuvant), and let the serum Ab response fall away to zero, and *then*
you dose fish orally, there is a
 serum Ab response to antigen.

 My conclusion has been that the intestine initially lacks a population
of B cells specific to the antigen, but IP
 priming can seed the gut with specific B cells that are present
systemically. This seeding means that future
 antigen encountered at the gut invokes a Ab response.

 I wonder, does anyone out there know of a parallel to this in mammals?
Ideally I would like to find a paper
 where a similar phenomenon occurred in a mammal, ie. restriction in gut
B cell repertoire was overcome by
 IP priming. So far I have not turned up anything in my searches.

 Thanks for your help,

 darren (darren.jones at uts.edu.au)


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