Alloreactivity: an old puzzle revisited.
Alloreactivity, defined as a strong primary T cell response against allelic variants of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecules in the species, has been a long-standing puzzle in immunology with some of its details remaining unclear up to now. Here I shall provide a historical overview of how our understanding of alloreactivity has evolved and propose an interpretation that considers alloreactivity to be a mixture of four mechanistically distinct prototypes of T cell response, namely, self-restricted peptide specific, allorestricted peptide specific, alloreactive peptide dependent and alloreactive peptide independent. The relative contribution of each prototype to a given alloresponse is dependent on the extent of disparity (i.e. the number and nature of amino acid substitutions in the docking surface for T cell receptor) between the MHC molecule that the T cell recognizes as self and the stimulating MHC molecule.
DrZaN Pharma Research Consulting, Wolfratshausen, Germany. zoltan.nagy@hotmail.de
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D000818:Animals; D006084:Graft Rejection / Q000276:immunology*; D006801:Humans; D007519:Isoantigens / Q000276:immunology*; D007959:Lymphocyte Culture Test, Mixed; D008285:Major Histocompatibility Complex / Q000276:immunology*; D011948:Receptors, Antigen, T-Cell / Q000276:immunology; D013601:T-Lymphocytes / Q000276:immunology*; D014181:Transplantation Immunology
D007519:Isoantigens; D011948:Receptors, Antigen, T-Cell