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Blood, 29 October 2009, Vol. 114, No. 18, pp. 3947-3955. Prepublished online as a Blood First Edition Paper on August 27, 2009; DOI 10.1182/blood-2009-03-211896.
TRANSPLANTATION The human alloreactive CD4+ T-cell repertoire is biased to a Th17 response and the frequency is inversely related to the number of HLA class II mismatches1 Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Nephrology, and 2 Laboratory of Transplantation, Division of Renal Transplantation, Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands Estimates of precursor frequency and assessment of functional characteristics of alloreactive CD4+ T cells are all biased by the need for long-term culture. In this study, direct visualization of human alloreactive CD4+ T cells on the single-cell level was achieved using cell surface expression of CD154 as a tool for identification. The average frequency of alloreactive CD154+CD4+ T cells among peripheral blood CD4+ T cells was 0.1%, with half of the cells displaying a naive phenotype. The proliferation capacity and expression of cytokines after allogeneic stimulation resided in these CD154+CD4+ T cells. The repertoire of alloreactive CD4+ T cells was biased to a Th17 response, and on average 24% of alloreactive CD154+CD4+ memory T cells produced interleukin-17 (IL-17) after polyclonal stimulation. Unexpectedly, mixed cell cultures from human leukocyte antigen (HLA)–identical donors also generated alloreactive CD154+CD4+ T cells and yielded the highest frequency compared with HLA-nonidentical combinations. Therefore, reactivity to minor histocompatibility antigens between HLA-identical subjects appears to be relatively common. Alloreactive HLA-identical T cells did not proliferate or express cytokines, but were driven to proliferation in the presence of exogenous IL-2.
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| Copyright © 2009 by American Society of Hematology Online ISSN: 1528-0020 | |||||||||