ABSTRACT
CD137 plays an important role as a co-stimulatory molecule in activated T cells. Agonistic CD137 specific antibodies have been investigated as therapeutic agents to promote tumor-specific immune responses by direct activation of T cells. As part of the pre-clinical pharmacological evaluation of cynomolgus monkeys, monkey CD137 was cloned and characterized. The deduced amino acid sequence encoded a full-length gene of 254 amino acids 95% identical to human CD137. Sequence variants identified in monkey CD137 include four splice variants lacking the transmembrane domain. These variants were detectable in human including two previously unreported variants. Two missense single nucleotide polymorphisms were detected present in 42 and 50% of 36 monkeys tested. In both monkey and human, mRNA expression of full-length CD137 and splice variants were significantly increased in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) upon stimulation by anti-CD3 antibodies. Recombinant monkey CD137 protein was bound with high affinity by an agonistic anti-human CD137 antibody but not by an anti-mouse CD137 antibody. In summary, compared to human, monkey CD137 showed distinct extracellular domain amino acid sequence and sequence polymorphisms. Thus, antibodies directed against epitopes in this extracellular domain could have differences in pharmacologic activity between cynomolgus monkeys and human or across individual cynomolgus monkeys.
Subject(s)
Macaca fascicularis/genetics , Tumor Necrosis Factor Receptor Superfamily, Member 9/genetics , Tumor Necrosis Factor Receptor Superfamily, Member 9/metabolism , Amino Acid Sequence , Animals , Antibodies/metabolism , Base Sequence , Cloning, Molecular , DNA Primers/genetics , Humans , Molecular Sequence Data , Mutation, Missense/genetics , Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide , Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction/veterinary , Sequence Alignment , Sequence Analysis, DNA/veterinaryABSTRACT
A new protease inhibitor was purified to apparent homogeneity from a culture medium of Photorhabdus luminescens by ammonium sulfate precipitation and preparative isoelectric focusing followed by affinity chromatography. Ph. luminescens, a bacterium symbiotically associated with the insect-parasitic nematode Heterorhabditis bacteriophora, exists in two morphologically distinguishable phases (primary and secondary). It appears that only the secondary-phase bacterium produces this protease inhibitor. The protease inhibitor has an M:(r) of approximately 12000 as determined by SDS-PAGE. Its activity is stable over a pH range of 3.5-11 and at temperatures below 50 degrees C. The N-terminal 16 amino acids of the protease inhibitor were determined as STGIVTFKND(X)GEDIV and have a very high sequence homology with the N-terminal region of an endogenous inhibitor (IA-1) from the fruiting bodies of an edible mushroom, Pleurotus ostreatus. The purified protease inhibitor inactivated the homologous protease with an almost 1:1 stoichiometry. It also inhibited proteases from a related insect-nematode-symbiotic bacterium, Xenorhabdus nematophila. Interestingly, when present at a molar ratio of 5 to 1, this new protease inhibitor completely inactivated the activity of both trypsin and elastase. The activity of proteinase A and cathepsin G was partially inhibited by this bacterial protease inhibitor, but it had no effect on chymotrypsin, subtilisin, thermolysin and cathepsins B and D. The newly isolated protease inhibitor from the secondary-phase bacteria and its specific inhibition of its own protease provides an explanation as to why previous investigators failed to detect the presence of protease activity in the secondary-phase bacteria. The functional implications of the protease inhibitor are also discussed in relation to the physiology of nematode-symbiotic bacteria.
