Absence of imprinting of HLA class Ia genes leads to co-expression of biparental alleles on term human trophoblast cells upon IFN-gamma induction.

Human trophoblast cells have developed various efficient regulatory mechanisms to prevent cell surface expression of the classical HLA-A, -B, and (but not always) -C class I molecules. This allows them to escape maternal alloimmune attack during pregnancy. However, recent results have demonstrated that such a lack of expression could be reversed in villous cytotrophoblast cells purified from term placenta by in vitro IFN-gamma treatment. In this context, we investigated whether both maternal and paternal HLA class Ia antigens were co-dominantly expressed in such trophoblast cells. Using polymerase chain reaction sequence-specific primers for HLA-A and HLA-C alleles, we detected transcripts of both paternal and maternal origins, showing that these genes were not affected by genomic imprinting, at least in term placenta. After in vitro IFN-gamma treatment, the polymorphic HLA-A and HLA-B antigens of both parental origins become detectable at the cell surface, as assessed by flow cytometry and/or complement-dependent microtoxicity test. Appearance of paternal antigens on trophoblast cells upon IFN-gamma induction raises the question of the in vivo biological consequences of this phenomena, in term of materno-fetal tolerance and in particular of a potential allogeneic cytotoxic immune response.