HLA micropolymorphisms strongly affect peptide-MHC multimer-based monitoring of antigen-specific CD8+ T cell responses

J Immunol. 2014 Jan 15;192(2):641-8. doi: 10.4049/jimmunol.1301770. Epub 2013 Dec 16.

Abstract

Peptide-MHC (pMHC) multimers have become one of the most widely used tools to measure Ag-specific T cell responses in humans. With the aim of understanding the requirements for pMHC-based personalized immunomonitoring, in which individuals expressing subtypes of the commonly studied HLA alleles are encountered, we assessed how the ability to detect Ag-specific T cells for a given peptide is affected by micropolymorphic differences between HLA subtypes. First, analysis of a set of 10 HLA-A*02:01-restricted T cell clones demonstrated that staining with pMHC multimers of seven distinct subtypes of the HLA-A*02 allele group was highly variable and not predicted by sequence homology. Second, to analyze the effect of minor sequence variation in a clinical setting, we screened tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes of an HLA-A*02:06 melanoma patient with either subtype-matched or HLA-A*02:01 multimers loaded with 145 different melanoma-associated Ags. This revealed that of the four HLA-A*02:06-restricted melanoma-associated T cell responses observed in this patient, two responses were underestimated and one was overlooked when using subtype-mismatched pMHC multimer collections. To our knowledge, these data provide the first demonstration of the strong effect of minor sequence variation on pMHC-based personalized immunomonitoring, and they provide tools to prevent this issue for common variants within the HLA-A*02 allele group.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Alleles
  • Amino Acid Sequence
  • Antigens, Neoplasm / genetics
  • Antigens, Neoplasm / immunology*
  • CD8-Positive T-Lymphocytes / immunology*
  • Clone Cells / immunology
  • HLA-A2 Antigen / genetics*
  • HLA-A2 Antigen / immunology*
  • Humans
  • Lymphocytes, Tumor-Infiltrating / immunology
  • Lymphocytes, Tumor-Infiltrating / metabolism
  • Major Histocompatibility Complex / genetics
  • Major Histocompatibility Complex / immunology*
  • Melanoma / genetics
  • Melanoma / immunology
  • Melanoma / metabolism
  • Molecular Sequence Data
  • Neoplasm Proteins / genetics
  • Neoplasm Proteins / immunology
  • Neoplasm Proteins / metabolism
  • Peptides / genetics
  • Peptides / immunology*
  • Peptides / metabolism
  • Polymorphism, Genetic / genetics*
  • Polymorphism, Genetic / immunology
  • Sequence Alignment

Substances

  • Antigens, Neoplasm
  • HLA-A2 Antigen
  • Neoplasm Proteins
  • Peptides