“…The selected strain combination thus led to rapid rejection of untreated donor islet tissue and was, in this respect, comparable to previously used models for islet transplantation across an MHC barrier (7,8,11,23). The immunogenicity of islet allografts has been attributed to the presence of passenger leukocytes (3,24), particularly the MHC class II-positive lymphoid cells, which are located in the islet interstitium (25). Because of the estimated number of islet cells with surface MHC class II positivity (p. 908), each implant of freshly isolated rat islets can be expected to introduce -2.10 4 of these cells, a number at which dendritic cells can induce immune responses in the rat (6).…”