Engineering T cells specific for a dominant severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus CD8 T cell epitope.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a highly contagious and life threatening disease, with a fatality rate of almost 10%. The etiologic agent is a novel coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV), with animal reservoirs found in bats and other wild animals and thus the possibility of reemergence. In this study, we first investigated at 6 years postinfection whether SARS-specific memory T cells persist in SARS-recovered individuals, demonstrating that these subjects still possess polyfunctional SARS-specific memory CD4+ and CD8+ T cells. A dominant memory CD8+ T cell response against SARS-CoV nucleocaspid protein (NP; amino acids 216 to 225) was then defined in SARS-recovered individuals carrying HLA-B*40:01, a HLA-B molecule present in approximately one-quarter of subjects of Asian ethnicities. To reconstitute such a CD8+ T cell response, we isolated the alpha and beta T cell receptors of the HLA-B*40:01-restricted SARS-specific CD8+ T cells. Using T cell receptor gene transfer, we generated SARS-specific redirected T cells from the lymphocytes of normal individuals. These engineered CD8+ T cells displayed avidity and functionality similar to that of natural SARS-specific memory CD8+ T cells. They were able to degranulate and produce gamma interferon, tumor necrosis factor alpha, and macrophage inflammatory proteins 1α and 1ß after antigenic stimulation. Since there is no effective treatment against SARS, these transduced T cells specific for an immunodominant SARS epitope may provide a new avenue for treatment during a SARS outbreak.

Stability screening of arrays of major histocompatibility complexes on combinatorially encoded flow cytometry beads.

The binding and stabilization capacity of potential T cell epitopes to class I MHC molecules form the basis for their immunogenicity and provide fundamental insight into factors that dictate cellular immune responses. We have developed a versatile high throughput cell-free method to measure MHC stability by capturing a variety of MHC products on the surface of streptavidin-coated particles followed by flow cytometry analysis. Arrays of peptide-MHC combinations, generated by exchanging conditional ligand-loaded MHC, could be probed in a single experiment, thus combining the molecular precision of biochemically purified MHCs with high content multiparametric flow cytometry-based assays. Semiquantitative determination of the peptide affinity for the restriction element could also be accomplished through competition experiments using this bead-based assay. Furthermore, the generated peptide-MHC reagents could directly be applied to antigen-specific CD8(+) T lymphocyte analysis. The combinatorial labeling of beads allowed straightforward identification by their unique fluorescent signatures and provided a convenient means for extended assay multiplexing.

Sources of diversity in T cell epitope discovery.

CD8-positive T cells respond to small antigenic peptide fragments presented on class I major histocompatibility complexes (MHCs). Those specific T cell epitopes capable of precipitating a cellular immune response are either derived from (altered) self (i.e. they are autoimmune- or cancer-associated) or come from foreign sources (i.e. they are pathogen-associated). Identification of T cell epitopes provides elementary information that can be employed in technologies that monitor and predict the likely outcome of an immune response, as well as in therapeutic and vaccine development efforts. The coexistence between host and pathogen has largely driven the diversification of both their systems of immune surveillance and their antigenic determinants, respectively. In this review, we discuss the multitude of factors that introduce diversity to the T cell response from both sides of the host-pathogen interaction. Furthermore, we provide an overview of a variety of commonly employed methods and tools to characterize class I MHC restricted antigen presentation and recent endeavors towards the harmonization of reporting data concerning T cell responses.