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Advances in Brief |
Surgery Branch, National Cancer Institute, NIH, Bethesda, Maryland 20892 [G. Z., Y. L., M. E-G., S. A. R., P. F. R.], Epimmune Inc., San Diego, California 92121 [J. S., A. S.], Center for Gene and Cell Therapy, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas 77030 [R-f. W.]
| ABSTRACT |
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| Introduction |
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| Materials and Methods |
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treatment, whereas 526mel was negative for MHC class II expression under the same conditions. F026mel was an early tumor culture generated from fine needle aspiration and showed low MHC class II expression in the absence of IFN-
treatment. The cosA2 cell line was a stable cos cell line transfected with a plasmid expressing HLA-A2. 293CIITA was generated by transduction of the 293 cells with a retrovirus encoding the class II transactivator gene (CIITA); the resultant cell line was naturally HLA-A2 negative and expressed HLA-DP4 (9)
. Culture medium for T lymphocytes was RPMI 1640 with 0.05 mM ß-mercaptoethanol, 300 IU/ml IL-2 (Chiron Corp., Emerville, CA), plus 10% human male AB serum provided by BioCheMed Inc. (Winchester, VA). The HLA-DP4-restricted CD4+ T-cell CT4-1 clone 12C was derived from a bulk line generated by ESO:161180 (9)
. The HLA-A2-restricted CD8+ T-cell TE8-1 clone 8F was derived from a bulk line generated by in vitro stimulation using ESO:167165,9V peptide variant (11)
. This T-cell clone recognized both ESO:157165 and ESO:157167 peptides.
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In Vitro Sensitization Procedure, T-Cell Purification, and Cytokine Release Assays.
In vitro sensitization procedures using PBMCs as APCs were as described before (12)
. Briefly, peptides at a final concentration of 0.5 and 10 µM for MHC class I and class II epitopes, respectively, were used to stimulate 2.5 x 105 cryo-preserved human PBMCs in each well of a 96-well plate. Rapid expansion and cloning of human T cells were performed as described (12)
, and weekly restimulation was performed once or twice. IL-2 at a final concentration of 120 IU/ml was not added until day 8, 1 day after the second stimulation, and fresh IL-2 was added every 3 days thereafter.
The CD4+ and CD8+ T cells were purified from cell cultures using a negative selection approach, which negatively depleted CD8+ (or CD4+) T cells together with natural killer cells, B cells, monocytes, and granulocytes with magnetic beads (Dynal Biotech).
For specificity assays, cells were incubated with several targets, and supernatants were assayed for cytokine release. In brief, peptides at a final concentration of 10 µM for MHC class II epitopes and 1 µM for MHC class I epitopes were pulsed onto target cells. Unless specified, cells were incubated in RPMI 1640 supplemented with 10% FCS for 90 minutes at 37 degree, followed by extensive wash. When serum-free medium was used, ß2-microglobulin (Sigma-Aldrich, St. Louis, MO) was added to a final concentration of 1 µg/ml. Approximately 3 x 104 target cells were incubated with the same number of T cells overnight, and cytokine release was measured using GM-CSF ELISA kits (R&D Systems, Minneapolis, MN) or IFN-
kits (Endogen, Inc., Woburn, MA).
HLA-A*0201 Peptide Binding Assays.
Quantitative assays to measure the binding of peptides to soluble HLA-A*0201 molecules were based on the inhibition of binding of a radiolabeled standard peptide. These assays were performed as described previously (13)
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| Results |
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0.03 and 0.3 µg/ml (0.02 and 0.2 µM), respectively.
ESO:157170 Is Capable of Generating Both CD4+ and CD8+ T Cells in Vitro.
In vitro immunogenicity of the gp100:209217 peptide had been used previously to provide a rationale for the development of more effective clinical protocols (15)
. The ability of a single ESO:157170 peptide to generate tumor-reactive CD4+ and CD8+ T cells in vitro was then examined. Two additional peptides, the HLA-DP4 epitope ESO:161180, which appeared to stimulate only CD4+ T cells, and the HLA-A2 epitope ESO:157167, which had been shown to significantly stimulated CD8+ T cells (11
, 16)
, were also used to carry out in vitro stimulations.
In two previous studies, it had been suggested that patients with anti-NY-ESO-1 antibodies were more likely to have pre-existing HLA-DP4 CD4+ and HLA-A2-restricted CD8+ T cells (9 , 17) . Therefore, PBMCs from five melanoma patients with high-titer antibodies against NY-ESO-1 (data not shown) and who also expressed HLA-A*0201 and HLA-DPB1*0401/0402 were chosen for in vitro peptide stimulations.
To facilitate the generation of T cells by peptide in vitro, in vitro stimulations were carried out using a microculture technique described previously (18)
. Cell cultures were stimulated weekly with peptide-pulsed autologous PBMCs. The cellular immune responses against both the HLA-A2-epitope ESO:157167 and the HLA-DP4-epitope ESO:161180 were monitored after the third in vitro stimulation. Micro-well cultures were considered to be positive if they secreted >100 pg/ml of IFN-
against cells pulsed with target peptides and at least twice the background response against cells pulsed with a control peptide. Cells reactive with the peptide epitopes were additionally analyzed for activities against transfected cells and tumor lines.
The IFN-
responses of cultures with the strongest reactivity from each patient under each stimulation condition are shown in Table 1
. All five of the patients developed T cells reactive with the DP4-restricted CD4+ T-cell epitope ESO:161180 after three rounds of stimulation with the ESO:157170 peptide. Two patients, BL and CT, developed T cells that directly recognized tumor lines expressing NY-ESO-1 and HLA-DP4. These T cells maintained their activity against the peptide epitope after depletion of the CD8+ population, demonstrating that the reactivity was mediated by CD4+ T cells (Fig. 1E)
. Two of the five patients, BL and CT, stimulated with the ESO:157170 peptide appeared to contain T cells reactive to the HLA-A2-restricted peptide ESO:157167. Similarly, these T cells maintained their reactivity after depletion of CD4+ T cells (Fig. 1E)
. Moreover, T cells raised from one of the two patients, CT, could directly recognize tumor cells expressing NY-ESO-1 and HLA-A2. CD4+ and CD8+ T-cell clones were generated from selected cultures and were shown to be able to recognize the NY-ESO-1 HLA-DP4 and HLA-A2 epitope, respectively (data not shown). Peptide dose titration experiment was carried out on CD8+ T-cell clones from patient TE, no apparent difference on the avidity of T cells generated by ESO:157167 and ESO:157170 was observed (data not shown). These data indicated that in vitro stimulation with the ESO:157170 peptide could generate NY-ESO-1-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cells from multiple melanoma patients.
After the in vitro stimulation with ESO:157167 peptide, CD8+ CTLs were generated from three of the five patients, BL, CT, and TE; CD4+ T cells were generated from one of the five patients. Stimulation with the peptide ESO:161180 generated CD4+ T cells but not NY-ESO-1-reactive CD8+ T cells from five patients who were evaluated.
Comparison of the in Vitro Immunogenicity of Different Peptides.
To obtain a measurement for the relative immunogenicity of individual peptides, i.e., ESO:157167, ESO:157170, and ESO:161180, the number of individual microculture wells with reactivities against the peptide epitopes was determined after two to three weekly stimulations. MHC class I activity was tested using L023 EBV B cells (HLA-A2+ and HLA-DP4-), and MHC class II activity was tested using 293CIITA (HLA-A2- and HLA-DP4+) cells. The HLA-A2 peptide used for testing was ESO:157165, which was different from the three peptides used for in vitro stimulation to avoid potential reactivity against a contaminant within the peptide preparation. For the same reason, ESO:160174 instead of ESO:161180 was used for testing the DP4-restricted CD4+ T-cell activity. As shown in Table 2
, peptide-reactive CD8+ T cells were generated from three of five patients in a total of 8 microcultures when using the ESO:157170 peptide. Peptide-reactive CD4+ T cells were observed from all five of the patients in a total of 29 microcultures after stimulation with the ESO:157170 peptide. In contrast, ESO:161180 peptide primarily raised peptide-reactive CD4+ T cells from five patients in a total of 17 microcultures, whereas CD8+ T-cell activity was observed only in one well after stimulation with the ESO:161180 peptide. A total of six wells derived from three patients developed peptide-reactive CD8+ T cells after stimulation with the ESO:157167 peptide; a total of 12 microcultures derived from two patients developed peptide-reactive CD4+ T cells. Therefore, ESO:157170 appeared to be efficient at sensitizing both CD4+ and CD8+ T cells. It was also noteworthy that several of the microcultures from BL and CT generated using the ESO:157170 peptide appeared to contain both CD4+ and CD8+ T-cell activities to NY-ESO-1.
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| Discussion |
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A number of MHC class II-restricted epitopes partially overlapping with MHC class I-restricted epitopes had been described. For example, the HLA-DR53-restricted helper epitope gp100:175189 from tumor antigen gp100 partially overlapped with an HLA-A2-restricted CTL epitope, gp100:177186; the HLA-DR7-restricted helper epitope gp100:7489 partially overlapped with two CTL epitopes, gp100:7078 and gp100:8795 (20) . Extensions of a minimal epitope might be used to obtain a peptide that contained both class I and class II epitopes. The difficulty with this approach was that whereas the open ends of the class II binding cleft generally allow extensions, the more closed nature of the class I binding cleft generally interferes with the binding of peptides that are longer than the minimal epitope of 910 amino acid residues. Nevertheless, we found in this study that peptides ranging from 9 to 15 amino acids in length apparently stimulate HLA-A2 restricted CTLs. These peptides of various lengths required the same NH2-terminal amino acid residue but allowed extension at the COOH termini. We speculated that the Pro near the COOH terminal might make a rigid turn of a longer peptide and allow it to fit the HLA-A2 peptide-binding groove. The only other case in which a 14-mer peptide worked as an MHC class I epitope was reported by Probst-Kepper et al. (21) . However, in that case the peptide presumably formed a bulge in the middle as both the NH2- and COOH-terminal residues were required for proper binding to the HLA-B35 molecule.
Previous studies provided evidence that some CTL response might be linked to HTC responses against an overlapping epitope within the same protein. For tumor antigen NY-ESO-1, previous reports indicated that CTL responses against ESO:157167 was closely associated with the presence of antibodies against the protein (17)
. We also reported that the ability to generate CD4+ T cells reactive with the HLA-DP4-restricted ESO:161180 epitope was associated with the presence of antibodies against NY-ESO-1 (9)
. This might be simply because CTLs and helper T-cell responses against these two closely situated peptides were associated. Results from this study also indicated that at least three of the five HLA-A2 and HLA-DP4 patients developed T-cell responses against both epitopes after in vitro stimulations (Table 2)
. Wang et al. (22)
also reported in a malaria DNA vaccine clinical trial that patients developed concordant CTL and helper T-cell responses against overlapping MHC class I and HLA-DR epitopes from Plasmodium falciparum (22)
. Moreover, they reported that the most antigenic class I peptides were those overlapping with DR peptides in the normal volunteers tested. Therefore, peptides containing overlapping class I and class II epitopes might be important candidates for vaccine development.
Previously, vaccinations were tried using a mixture of CTL and helper T-cell epitopes, as well as peptides consisting of covalently linked CTL and helper epitopes (23 , 24) . Whereas these approaches might enhance the CTL induction compared with immunizations with CTL epitopes alone, we speculated that using natural peptides of dual MHC class I and class II specificities might be more advantageous. In theory, peptides composed of natural CTL and helper T-cell epitopes could be loaded onto the same APCs and bring both CTL and HTCs together. This allows the close contact of APCs, CD4+, and CD8+ T cells, and enhances the direct communications among these cells through means such as cross-linking molecules and cytokines. Some of these interactions have been demonstrated as critical for the initiation of an effective immune responses, for instance, the CD40-CD40L interaction between APCs and CD4+ T cells plays important roles in activation of dendritic cells by CD4+ T cells; and cytokines secreted by CD4+ T cells are important to activate and expand CD8+ CTLs (19) . Natural peptides of dual MHC class I and class II specificities may also be advantageous compared with chimeric peptides formed by linkage of CTL and helper epitopes because the later may not be processed properly by APCs and may result in the presentation of artificial epitopes from the linkers. Furthermore, most long peptides consisting of covalently linked epitopes may not be presented by MHC class I molecules because of the lack of cross-presentation if they do not bind to MHC class I molecules directly.
It has been shown before that CTL clones with the same specificity generated by the same peptide may show heterogeneous functions. Some clones may secret high levels of cytokines and some clones may have higher lytic activity on stimulating with the same target (25)
. In another study, it was shown that GM-CSF and IFN-
but not IL-2, tumor necrosis factor
, IL-4, or IL-10 may be better correlated with the lytic activity of peptide activated CTLs (26)
. Therefore, we used cytokine release assays (IFN-
or GM-CSF) in this study to show CTL specificities without specifically addressing the lytic function of these CTLs.
In summary, for the first time a single peptide was demonstrated as capable of generating both CD4+ and CD8+ T cells against cancer. Thus, peptides with dual class I and class II specificities represented a new strategy for vaccine development.
| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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| FOOTNOTES |
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1 To whom requests for reprints should be addressed, at Surgery Branch, National Cancer Institute, NIH, Bethesda, MD 20892. Phone: (301) 496-9383; Fax: (301) 496-0011; E-mail: gang_zeng{at}nih.gov ![]()
2 The abbreviations used are: HTC, helper T cell; EBV B, Epstein-Barr Virus infected B lymphocyte; PBMC, peripheral blood mononuclear cell; APC, antigen-presenting cell; ESO, NY-ESO-1; IL, interleukin; GM-CSF, granulocyte macrophage colony-stimulating factor. ![]()
Received 4/ 1/02. Accepted 5/17/02.
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