title: Ex vivo stimulation of cytomegalovirus (CMV)-specific T cells using CMV pp65-modified dendritic cells as stimulators.
abstract: Cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection is a dangerous complication in immunosuppressed individuals such as allogeneic stem cell transplant patients. CMV disease can be prevented by the early post-transplant transfer of donor-derived, CMV-directed, T cells. Fast and cost efficient methods to generate CMV-specific T cells are, therefore, warranted. The current study utilized peptide-pulsed and adenovirus-transduced dendritic cells (DC) to generate CMV-restricted T cells. After one stimulation with CMV pp65495-503 peptide-pulsed DC and three re-stimulations with peptide-pulsed monocytes, virtually all T cells were CD8+, expressed the relevant T cell receptor and exhibited high peptide-specific lytic activity. After only one stimulation, pp65495-503-restricted T cells could be sorted to a purity of higher than 95% and expanded up to 1000-fold in 2 weeks. This technique may prove useful for the rapid generation of large quantities of specific cytolytic T lymphocytes (CTL) for cell therapy. DC transduced with an adenoviral vector encoding the full-length pp65 protein (Adpp65) were able to simultaneously expand CTL against multiple epitopes of pp65. In addition, they activated CMV-specific CD4+ T-helper cells. This approach would stimulate multiple-epitope populations of pp65-specific T cells and could be made available to patients of any human leucocyte antigen (HLA) haplotype. DC transduced with adenoviral vectors to express full-length antigens may prove to be potent vaccines against viral pathogens and cancer.
authors.affiliation: Clinical Immunology Division, Rudbeck Laboratory, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden.
authors.forename: Björn
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Carlsson
authors.forename: Wing-Shing
authors.initials: WS
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.forename: Thomas H
authors.initials: TH
authors.lastname: Tötterman
authors.forename: Magnus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Essand
mesh_terms: D000256:Adenoviridae / Q000235:genetics; D019496:Cancer Vaccines; D018920:Coculture Techniques; D003586:Cytomegalovirus Infections / Q000276:immunology / Q000517:prevention & control*; D003713:Dendritic Cells / Q000276:immunology*; D005822:Genetic Vectors / Q000494:pharmacology; D006801:Humans; D008213:Lymphocyte Activation; D010750:Phosphoproteins / Q000235:genetics; D013601:T-Lymphocytes / Q000276:immunology*; D013602:T-Lymphocytes, Cytotoxic / Q000276:immunology; D006377:T-Lymphocytes, Helper-Inducer / Q000276:immunology; D014161:Transduction, Genetic / Q000379:methods; D014763:Viral Matrix Proteins / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: D019496:Cancer Vaccines; D010750:Phosphoproteins; D014763:Viral Matrix Proteins; C065418:cytomegalovirus matrix protein 65kDa