Acta Pharm. 51 (2001) 95-106

Original scientific paper  
 

The immunomodulatory characteristics of phthalimido desmuramyl dipeptides

MARIJA SOLLNER,1* ANTON ŠTALC,2 SAŠA SIMCIC,3 BRANKA WRABER,3 
VLADIMIR KOTNIK,3 LUCKA POVŠIC2 and  UROŠ URLEB1


1Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
2R & D Dept., LEK, Pharmaceutical Company, Ljubljana, Slovenia
3Medical Faculty, Institute of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Received October 25, 1999      Accepted March 29, 2001

In search of therapeutically useful muramyl dipeptide related analogues, a series of phthalimido desmuramyl dipeptides has been synthesized. Immunobiological properties of compounds were examined in an in vivo immunorestoration test. LK-413 and LK-423 were selected for further ex vivo immunological studies to investigate their ability to influence the IL-2 production and activation of macrophages. Jerne's plaque forming cells assay was performed to monitor the effect of B cell differentiation. Blast transformation of T cells stimulated with ConA was used to detect the influence on T lymphocytes. The immunossupressive or immunostimulating activity of the compounds tested can be interpreted as a result of attachment of different parts of the molecule to different immunocompetent cells that show their specific responses in a dose dependent manner.


Keywords: desmuramyl dipeptides, immunomodulation, immunorestoration, IL-2