Rose Marie Nagy

Experimental disciform keratitis: I. Immune response of the cornea to herpes simplex virus☆

Abstract Large inocula of washed viable herpes simplex virus injected into the corneal stroma caused an acute inflammatory response in the cornea, conjunctiva, iris, and ciliary body. This reaction is due to an infection that reaches its peak in 7 days and subsides in 8 to 13 days. When virus was reinjected a month or more later, the majority of corneas did not suffer recurrence of inflammatory reactions. There to four corneal injections of virus given 2 to 5 weeks apart led to brief periods of corneal clouding which could also be clicited by noninfected chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) proteins. Only one cornea in 28 had a brief clouding response which could not be related to CAM protein. None of the corneal clouding reactions was permanent but cleared after 7 days and, apart from minor, trauma-induced scars, all corneas returned to full clarity. Corneas sensitized with heat-inactivated virus developed negative or very low titers of neutralizing antibody, but intracorneal or intra-aqueous injections of viable virus led to high titers of such antibody in corneal extracts as well as serum. A conclusion is drawn that corneal hypersensitivity to herpes simplex virus, for at lcast two widely divergent strains, could not be related to the clinical problem of disciform keratitis on an experimental basis.

A method for the isolation of t lymphocytes from normal and neoplastic ocular tissue

We have employed a simple organ culture method to isolate in vitro the small numbers of T lymphocytes present in choroidal melanomas, as well as normal choroid. Subsequent growth and expansion of the isolated T cells was accomplished in the presence of Interleukin-2 (IL-2; T Cell Growth Factor).