|
||
Brief Definitive Reports |

Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Lausanne Branch, University of Lausanne, Epalinges, 1011 Switzerland
| Abstract |
|---|
|
|
|---|
Key Words: human skin cytotoxic T lymphocytes fluorescence-activated cell sorter autoimmunity
Abbreviations used: CLA, cutaneous lymphocyte-associated antigen.
itiligo is a common progressive depigmentary condition that is believed to be due to the autoimmune-mediated destruction of epidermal melanocytes. Melanocyte-specific autoantibodies have been described in vitiligo patients, but their pathogenic role remains uncertain (1–5). Titers of such autoantibodies in individuals with melanoma-associated hypopigmentation are similar to those in normal controls, suggesting that, in these patients, other mechanisms may lead to melanocyte loss (4). The observation that melanocyte proteins are targets for antimelanoma CTLs (6–8) raises the possibility that destruction of epidermal melanocytes in vitiligo patients could be due to a melanocyte-specific CTL response. Indeed, the spontaneous appearance of vitiligo has been associated with an improved prognosis in individuals with metastatic melanoma (9–10). Histology of the advancing margins of vitiligo reveals a lymphocytic infiltrate predominantly composed of CD8+ T cells expressing the skin homing receptor, cutaneous lymphocyte-associated antigen (CLA),1 which is a modified form of P selectin–binding glycoprotein 1 (11–14). Recently, dendritic cell-based vaccination strategies for treatment of melanoma have been accompanied by the acquisition of tumor-specific CTL responses and cutaneous depigmentation, suggesting that melanocyte-specific CTLs can play a role in melanocytic destruction (15). Animal models of vitiligo are also consistent with a role for autoreactive CD8+ T cells (16), but it has remained unclear whether antigen-specific CD8+ T cells are involved in vitiligo or indeed any other human autoimmune condition. Here, we demonstrate the presence of high frequencies of skin-homing melanocyte-specific CTLs in the peripheral blood of patients with autoimmune vitiligo compared with healthy volunteers.
Subjects.
Cytotoxicity Assays.
Cell Culture.
By staining of PBMC directly ex vivo, without any antigen-specific stimulation, we observed high frequencies of MelanA-specific CTLs in seven of nine A*0201-positive vitiligo patients, but in only one of six A*0201-positive asymptomatic controls (Fig. 1, A–D). Frequencies were similar to those previously obtained for A*0201-restricted influenza A matrix protein in asymptomatic patients (26). The identification of A*0201-restricted MelanA-specific CTLs was dependent on the presence of HLA-A*0201, as none of four A*0201-negative vitiligo controls had detectable CTLs ex vivo. No tyrosinase (369–377)-specific CTLs were observed directly ex vivo in any patient group. It is certainly possible that melanocyte-specific CTLs exist to epitopes other than those tested with the HLA-tetrameric complexes. The one A*0201-positive asymptomatic control with a frequency of MelanA-specific CTLs similar to that observed in the vitiligo patients had no personal or family history suggestive of autoimmune disease. To explain such a high frequency of MelanA-specific CTLs in the absence of disease, we examined the skin-homing capacity of CTLs from the cohort. The majority of MelanA-specific CTLs from the vitiligo patients expressed the skin-homing receptor CLA, in contrast to those from the asymptomatic control who had detectable CTLs, in whom the CTLs were all negative for CLA (Fig. 1, A–F). There was a statistically significant difference between the number of CLA-positive A2–MelanA tetramer+ CTLs between patients and controls (P < 0.05). These data confirmed that high frequencies of autoreactive CTLs could be detected directly ex vivo in patients with vitiligo, but were only associated with disease if they were able to home to the skin.
![]()
Materials and Methods
Top
Abstract
Materials and Methods
Results and Discussion
References
HLA–Peptide Tetrameric Complexes and Flow Cytometry.
HLA– peptide tetrameric complexes were synthesized as previously described (17). In brief, purified HLA heavy chain and β2 microglobulin were synthesized using a prokaryotic expression system (pET; Novagen, Milwaukee, WI). The heavy chain was modified by deletion of the transmembrane/cytosolic tail and COOH-terminal addition of a sequence containing the BirA enzymatic biotinylation site. Heavy chain, β2 microglobulin, and peptide were refolded by dilution. A*0201-binding peptides were tyrosinase 369–377 YMDGTMSQV (18–20) and MelanA 26-35 ELAGIGILTV (7, 8, 21). The 45-kD refolded product was isolated using fast protein liquid chromatography (FPLC), biotinylated by BirA (Avidity, Denver, CO) in the presence of biotin (Sigma Chemical Co., St. Louis, MO), ATP (Sigma Chemical Co.) and Mg2+ (Sigma Chemical Co.). The biotinylated product was separated from free biotin by gel filtration and ion exchange using FPLC. Streptavidin–PE conjugate (Sigma Chemical Co.) was added in a 1:4 molar ratio and the tetrameric product was concentrated to 1 mg/ml. Analysis of cells for the expression of cell surface markers was performed using a FACScan® (Becton Dickinson & Co., Mountain View, CA) and CellQuest software (Becton Dickinson & Co.). Frozen PBMC were thawed and incubated for 24–48 h in RPMI 1640 supplemented with 10% FCS to allow recovery of cell viability. 106 cells were centrifuged at 300 g for 5 min and resuspended in 50 µl cold PBS. Anti–CLA antibody (rat IgM; PharMingen, San Diego, CA) was added and the samples incubated on ice for 20 min. After two washes with PBS, anti-rat IgM-FITC (PharMingen) was added and the cells left for a further incubation on ice for 20 min. After two washes with PBS, the tetramer and anti–CD8-Tricolor (Caltag Laboratories, Burlingame, CA) were added and incubated for another 20 min. The samples were washed two more times with PBS before formaldehyde fixation. Triple-color analysis was performed with tetramer-PE, anti–CD8-tricolor, and anti–CLA. Controls for the tetramers included staining A*0201-negative individuals and the use of an irrelevant A*0201-tetramer (SLYNTVATL p17Gag 77-85; reference 22).
13 individuals with vitiligo were recruited through the Vitiligo Society (London, UK) and nine were found to be HLA-A*0201 positive when screened using allele-specific PCR. Six patients had associated autoimmune conditions (four were HLA-A*0201 positive) including thyroid disease and pernicious anaemia, but the remaining seven (five were HLA-A*0201 positive) had no other clinical disorders. None of the patients were on immunosuppressive therapy. The negative control individuals were healthy asymptomatics with no history of autoimmune disease.
A*0201-positive EBV-transformed B cell lines, T2 cells, or melanoma cells (provided by Dr. P. van der Bruggen, Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Bruxelles, Belgium) were incubated at 37°C for 1 h in the presence of Na2 51CrO4 (Amersham Pharmacia Biotech, Inc., Piscataway, NJ) at 2 µCi/µl. The cells were washed once in medium containing 10% FCS and incubated either with or without peptide at 1 µM for 1 h. The targets were washed a further two times before plating into 96-well round-bottomed plates at 2,500 cells per well. 100 µl of medium containing cells at documented E/T ratios were added to each well after counting in the presence of trypan blue. The plates were incubated at 37°C for 4 h before harvesting 20 µl of supernatant. Percentage lysis was estimated from (experimental counts – media control) x 100/(detergent counts – media control). Media controls were between 10 and 15% of detergent controls.
PBMCs were incubated with 100 µM peptide for 1 h before dilution at 2 x 106 cells/ml in RPMI 1640 supplemented with 5% human serum and 25 ng/ml IL-7 (23). Lymphocult-T (Biotest, Dreieich, Germany) was added at day 4 to a final concentration of 10%. The cells were harvested at day 12 for flow cytometry analysis or cytotoxicity assays.
![]()
Results and Discussion
Top
Abstract
Materials and Methods
Results and Discussion
References
To test the hypothesis that high frequencies of melanocyte-specific CTLs correlate with vitiligo, we quantified the frequency of ex vivo melanocyte-specific CTLs by constructing HLA-A*0201–peptide tetrameric complexes (17, 24) based on two A*0201-binding peptides derived from melanocyte proteins MelanA (MelanA 26–35) and tyrosinase (tyrosinase 369–377) (7, 8, 18–20). A modified MelanA 26-35 peptide (alanine to leucine at position 2) has previously been shown to increase the binding affinity for A*0201 without affecting CTL recognition (21). HLA heavy chain was expressed in Escherichia coli with an engineered COOH-terminal signal sequence containing a biotinylation site for the enzyme BirA. After the refolding of heavy chain, β2 microglobulin, and peptide, the complex was biotinylated and tetramer formation induced by the addition of streptavidin. By using fluorescently labeled streptavidin, the tetramer was used to stain and sort antigen-specific cells by flow cytometry. HLA–peptide tetrameric complexes bind to antigen-specific CTLs with high specificity such that CTL clones and lines directed to different epitope peptides bound to the same HLA molecule do not stain. Tetramer binding is known to correlate well with both peptide-specific cytolytic activity and IFN-
production (24–26), and even down to low frequencies of antigen-specific T cells (1 in 5,000 CD8+ T cells or less) it is possible to directly isolate tetramer-positive cells by FACS® (26).
|
|
|
Using HLA–peptide tetrameric complexes, we have shown an association between high frequencies of skin-homing melanocyte-specific CTLs and autoimmune vitiligo. Furthermore, the frequency of such CTLs correlates with the extent of disease. Therefore, in addition to the previously documented melanocyte-specific autoantibodies (1–5), these data are consistent with a role for skin-homing melanocyte-specific CTLs in vitiligo. The ability of such cells to home to sites of potential tissue damage may be a means to control peripheral tolerance in vivo. This raises the possibility that CD8-dependent cell-mediated immunity may be an important generalized effector mechanism in autoimmune conditions and therefore a potential target for therapeutic intervention.
| Acknowledgments |
|---|
This work was supported by the Medical Research Council, UK, and the Cancer Research Campaign.
Submitted: 2 June 1998
Revised: 30 June 1998
| References |
|---|
|
|
|---|
1 Song YH, Connor E, Li Y, Zorovich B, Balducci P & Maclaren N. The role of tyrosinase in autoimmune vitiligo, Lancet, 1994, 344, 1049–1052.[Medline]
2 Kemp EH, Gawkrodger DJ, Watson PF & Weetman AP. Immunoprecipitation of melanogenic enzyme autoantigens with vitiligo sera: evidence for cross-reactive autoantibodies to tyrosinase and tyrosinase-related protein-2 (TRP-2), Clin Exp Immunol, 1997, 109, 495–500.[Medline]
3 Hara I, Takechi Y & Houghton AN. Implicating a role for immune recognition of self in tumor rejection: passive immunization against the brown locus protein, J Exp Med, 1995, 182, 1609–1614.
4 Merimsky O, Shoenfeld Y, Baharav E, Altomonte M, Chaitchik S, Maio M, Ferrone S & Fishman P. Melanoma-associated hypopigmentation: where are the antibodies? , Am J Clin Oncol, 1996, 19, 613–618.[Medline]
5 Naughton GK, Eisinger M & Bystryn JC. Antibodies to normal human melanocytes in vitiligo, J Exp Med, 1983, 158, 246–251.
6 Brichard V, Van Pel A, Wolfel T, Wolfel C, De Plaen E, Lethe B, Coulie P & Boon T. The tyrosinase gene codes for an antigen recognized by autologous cytolytic T lymphocytes on HLA-A2 melanomas, J Exp Med, 1993, 178, 489–495.
7 Coulie PG, Brichard V, Van Pel A, Wolfel T, Schneider J, Traversari C, Mattei S, De Plaen E, Lurquin C, Szikora J-P et al.. A new gene coding for a differentiation antigen recognized by autologous cytolytic T lymphocytes on HLA-A2 melanomas, J Exp Med, 1994, 180, 35–42.
8 Kawakami Y, Eliyahu S, Sakaguchi K, Robbins P, Rivoltini L, Yannelli J, Appella E & Rosenberg S. Identification of the immunodominant peptides of the MART-1 human melanoma antigen recognized by the majority of HLA-A2–restricted tumor infiltrating lymphocytes, J Exp Med, 1994, 180, 347–352.
9 Nordlund JJ, Kirkwood JM, Forget BM, Milton G, Albert DM & Lerner AB. Vitiligo in patients with metastatic melanoma: a good prognostic sign, J Am Acad Dermatol, 1983, 9, 689–696.[Medline]
10 Duhra P & Ilchyshyn A. Prolonged survival in metastatic malignant melanoma associated with vitiligo, Clin Exp Dermatol, 1991, 16, 303–305.[Medline]
11 Badri AM, Todd PM, Garioch JJ, Gudgeon JE, Stewart DG & Goudie RB. An immunohistological study of cutaneous lymphocytes in vitiligo, J Pathol, 1993, 170, 149–155.[Medline]
12 Le Poole I, van den Wijngaard R, Westerhof W & Das PK. Presence of T cells and macrophages in inflammatory vitiligo skin parallels melanocyte disappearance, Am J Pathol, 1996, 148, 1219–1228.[Abstract]
13 Fuhlbrigge RC, Kieffer JD, Armerding D & Kupper TS. Cutaneous lymphocyte antigen is a specialized form of PSGL-1 expressed on skin-homing T cells, Nature, 1997, 389, 978–981.[Medline]
14 Borges E, Pendl G, Eytner R, Steegmaier M, Zollner O & Vestweber D. The binding of T cell-expressed P-selectin glycoprotein ligand-1 to E- and P-selectin is differentially regulated, J Biol Chem, 1997, 272, 28786–28792.
15 Nestle FO, Alijagic S, Gilliet M, Sun Y, Grabbe S, Dummer R, Burg G & Schadendorf D. Vaccination of melanoma patients with peptide- or tumor lysate-pulsed dendritic cells, Nat Med, 1998, 4, 328–332.[Medline]
16 Erf GF, Trejo SA & Smyth JJ. T cells in regenerating feathers of Smyth line chickens with vitiligo, Clin Immunol Immunopathol, 1995, 76, 120–126.[Medline]
17 Altman JD, Moss P, Goulder P, Barouch DH, McHeyzer WM, Bell JI, McMichael AJ & Davis MM. Phenotypic analysis of antigen-specific T lymphocytes, Science, 1996, 274, 94–96.
18 Wolfel T, Van Pel A, Brichard V, Schneider J, Seliger B, Meyer zum Buschenfelde KH & Boon T. Two tyrosinase nonapeptides recognized on HLA-A2 melanomas by autologous cytolytic T lymphocytes, Eur J Immunol, 1994, 24, 759–764.[Medline]
19 Cox A, Skipper J, Chen Y, Henderson R, Darrow T, Shabanowitz J, Engelhard V, Hunt D & Slingluff C. Identification of a peptide recognized by five melanoma-specific human cytotoxic T cell lines, Science, 1994, 264, 716–719.
20 Skipper JC, Hendrickson RC, Gulden PH, Brichard V, Van Pel A, Chen Y, Shabanowitz J, Wolfel T, Slingluff CL Jr, Boon T et al.. An HLA-A2-restricted tyrosinase antigen on melanoma cells results from posttranslational modification and suggests a novel pathway for processing of membrane proteins, J Exp Med, 1996, 183, 527–534.
21 Valmori D, Fonteneau JF, Lizana CM, Gervois N, Lienard D, Rimoldi D, Jongeneel V, Jotereau F, Cerottini JC & Romero P. Enhanced generation of specific tumor-reactive CTL in vitro by selected Melan-A/MART-1 immunodominant peptide analogues, J Immunol, 1998, 160, 1750–1758.
22 Parker KC, Bednarek MA, Hull LK, Utz U, Cunningham B, Zweerink HJ, Biddison WE & Coligan JE. Sequence motifs important for peptide binding to the human MHC class I molecule, HLA-A2, J Immunol, 1992, 149, 3580–3587.[Abstract]
23 Lalvani A, Dong T, Ogg G, Patham AA, Newell H, Hill AV, McMichael AJ & Rowland JS. Optimization of a peptide-based protocol employing IL-7 for in vitro restimulation of human cytotoxic T lymphocyte precursors, J Immunol Methods, 1997, 210, 65–77.[Medline]
24 Ogg GS, Jin X, Bonhoeffer S, Dunbar PR, Nowak MA, Monard S, Segal JP, Cao Y, Rowland JS, Cerundolo V et al.. Quantitation of HIV-1-specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes and plasma load of viral RNA, Science, 1998, 279, 2103–2106.
25 Murali KK, Altman JD, Suresh M, Sourdive DJ, Zajac AJ, Miller JD, Slansky J & Ahmed R. Counting antigen-specific CD8 T cells: a reevaluation of bystander activation during viral infection, Immunity, 1998, 8, 177–187.[Medline]
26 Dunbar PR, Ogg GS, Chen J, Rust N, van der Bruggen P & Cerundolo V. Direct isolation, phenotyping and cloning of low frequency antigen-specific CTL from peripheral blood, Curr Biol, 1998, 8, 413–416.[Medline]
27 Visseren M, van Elsas A, van der Voort E, Ressing M, Kast M, Schrier P & Melief C. CTL specific for the tyrosinase can be induced from healthy donor blood to lyse melanoma cells, J Immunol, 1995, 154, 3991–3998.[Abstract]
28 van Elsas A, van der Burg S, van der Minne C, Borghi M, Mourer JS, Melief CJ & Schrier PI. Peptide-pulsed dendritic cells induce tumoricidal cytotoxic T lymphocytes from healthy donors against stably HLA-A*0201-binding peptides from the Melan-A/MART-1 self antigen, Eur J Immunol, 1996, 26, 1683–1689.[Medline]
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| TABLE OF CONTENTS |
|