Role of endogenous peptide in human alloreactive cytotoxic T cell responses

Abstract

The T × B hybrid 174 × CEM.T2 (T2) has been shown to be defective in the processing of proteins for presentation by MHC class I molecules. It continues, however, to express significant quantities of HLA-A2.1, suggesting that this class I molecule is expressed either in a largely peptide-free form or in association with a small subset of peptides. In this paper T2 was used in conjunction with limiting difution analysis to provide a direct estimate of the fraction of alloreactive cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) that were dependent upon the presence of peptides for their recognition of HLA-A2.1. Alloreactive cytotoxic T cell lines generated by stimulation with HLA-A2.1 expressing peripheral blood lymphocytes recognized T2 poorly. Split-well analysis of 240 clonal limiting dilution cultures demonstrated that this reflected the existence of two subpopulations. An average 85% of HLA-A2.1 specific CTLs recognized HLA-A2.1 on normal cells but not on T2. The remainder recognized HLA-A2.1 on both T2 and normal targets. CTL lines with the latter specificity could be generated by using T2 as a stimulator cell. Using target cells that either expressed a lower density of HLA-A2.1 or that expressed HLA-A2 molecules that had been mutated to affect CDS binding, no significant differences in avidity between T2-reactive and T2-unreactive CTLs were seen. Thus the failure of the majority of alloreactive CTLs to recognize T2 is not a consequence of the lower level of HLA-A2.1 surface expression on this cell, but Is Instead due to the absence of appropriate epitopes. This suggests that most of the epitopes recognized by HLA-A2.1 specific alloreactive CTLs depend upon the presence of endogenous peptides which are absent or significantly reduced on T2 cells. The significance of these results to current models of alloreactivity is discussed.