The precursor frequency of alloreactive CTLs is proportional to the number of T cell epitope specificities

The aim of this study is to find the experimental evidence that the precursor frequency of alloreactive CTLs is proportional to the number of the T-cell epitope specificities. The number of T-cell epitope specificities was manipulated by pulsing different number of HLA-A2 restricted peptide(s) onto the T2 cells, which acted as stimulating cells to elicit allo-reaction by co-culturing with peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBLs) of HLA-A2 negative individual. Ten HLA-A2 restricted peptides (all were normal cell components) were synthesized, and cell peptide extract was prepared by frozen and thawed.T2 cells loaded with different number of peptide(s) were co-cultured with PBLs of an HLA-A2 negative individual; the latter were stained with PKH67 in advance. Then the proliferation was monitored with flow cytometry, and the precursor frequency of the effector cells was analyzed by the ModFit Software. After 6 d of culture, no proliferation was observed in the bulk culture of PBL alone, and obvious proliferation took place when PBLs of the HLA-A2 negative were co-cultured with T2 cells loaded with or without loading peptide(s). The precursor frequency of the alloreactive CTLs was 0.052 819 for co-culture with T2 cells loaded without peptide; however it was 0.030 429 for T2 cells with EBV/ LMP2A and 0. 030 528 for T2 cells loaded with a single autogeneic peptide, and increased up to 0.144 942 for T2 cells loaded with 10 autogeneic peptides; the precursor frequency was 0.203 649 when co-cultured with T2 cells loaded with miscellaneous peptides extracted from the cytoplasm of T2 cells. This study reveals that the precursor frequency of alloreactive CTLs is proportional to the number of T-cell epitope specificities, and independent of the density of the allogeneic HLA ClassⅠmolecule. Our findings support the hypothesis that the alloreactive T cell populations comprise miscellaneous T cell clones; each is specific to corresponding pMHC. The novel constellation of peptides presented by allogeneic MHC molecules makes thousands of different epitopes, which account for the exceptional high precursor frequency of alloreactive T cells.

The precursor frequency of alloreactive CTLs is proportional to the number of T cell epitope specificities