Skin-induced tolerance as a new needle free therapeutic strategy

This article summarizes current knowledge about a new subject called “skin induced tolerance”. Suppression is induced via epicutaneous (EC) immunization with a protein antigen and is described in Th1, Tc1 and NK mediated contact hypersensitivity (CHS) reactions. The subject of skin-induced suppression is also described in the regulation of experimental models of autoimmune diseases like experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), collagen induced arthritis (CIA) and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and finally in an animal model of graft rejection. The potential clinical use of this approach to regulate human diseases is also discussed.