SPI-CI and SPI-6 cooperate in the protection from effector cell-mediated cytotoxicity.

Tumors have several mechanisms to escape from the immune system. One of these involves expression of intracellular anticytotoxic proteins that modulate the execution of cell death. Previously, we have shown that the serine protease inhibitor (serpin) SPI-6, which inactivates the cytotoxic protease granzyme B (GrB), is capable of preventing cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL)-mediated apoptosis. Despite its potent antiapoptotic activity, SPI-6 does not prevent membranolysis induced by cytotoxic lymphocytes. We now provide evidence that several colon carcinoma cell lines do resist membranolysis and that this protection is dependent on SPI-6 but also requires expression of a closely related serpin called SPI-CI (serine protease inhibitor involved in cytotoxicity inhibition). Expression of SPI-CI is absent from normal colon but observed in placenta, testis, early during embryogenesis, and in cytotoxic lymphocytes. SPI-CI encodes a chymotrypsin-specific inhibitor and irreversibly interacts with purified granzyme M. Moreover, SPI-CI can protect cells from purified perforin/GrM-induced lysis. Our data therefore indicate that SPI-CI is a novel immune escape molecule that acts in concert with SPI-6 to prevent cytotoxic lymphocyte-mediated killing of tumor cells.

Identification of multiple HLA-DR-restricted epitopes of the tumor-associated antigen CAMEL by CD4+ Th1/Th2 lymphocytes.

CD4(+) Th cells play an important role in the induction and maintenance of adequate CD8(+) T cell-mediated antitumor responses. Therefore, identification of MHC class II-restricted tumor antigenic epitopes is of major importance for the development of effective immunotherapies with synthetic peptides. CAMEL and NY-ESO-ORF2 are tumor Ags translated in an alternative open reading frame from the highly homologous LAGE-1 and NY-ESO-1 genes, respectively. In this study, we investigated whether CD4(+) T cell responses could be induced in vitro by autologous, mature dendritic cells pulsed with recombinant CAMEL protein. The data show efficient induction of CAMEL-specific CD4(+) T cells with mixed Th1/Th2 phenotype in two healthy donors. Isolation of CD4(+) T cell clones from the T cell cultures of both donors led to the identification of four naturally processed HLA-DR-binding CAMEL epitopes: CAMEL(1-20), CAMEL(14-33), CAMEL(46-65), and CAMEL(81-102). Two peptides (CAMEL(1-20) and CAMEL(14-33)) also contain previously identified HLA class I-binding CD8(+) T cell epitopes shared by CAMEL and NY-ESO-ORF2 and are therefore interesting tools to explore for immunotherapy. Furthermore, two CD4(+) T cell clones that recognized the CAMEL(14-33) peptide with similar affinities were shown to differ in recognition of tumor cells. These CD4(+) T cell clones recognized the same minimal epitope and expressed similar levels of adhesion, costimulatory, and inhibitory molecules. TCR analysis demonstrated that these clones expressed identical TCR beta-chains, but different complementarity-determining region 3 loops of the TCR alpha-chains. Introduction of the TCRs into proper recipient cells should reveal whether the different complementarity-determining region 3 alpha loops are important for tumor cell recognition.

TCR reconstitution in Jurkat reporter cells facilitates the identification of novel tumor antigens by cDNA expression cloning.

The identification of novel tumor antigens is of extreme importance for effective immunotherapy against cancer. A major obstacle in this field is the limited life span of tumor-specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) in vitro. Therefore we searched for a method to isolate the tumor specificity of these CTLs, i.e., their T-cell receptors (TCRs) and transfer it to an immortalized T-cell line. For this purpose, a TCR-negative Jurkat T-cell line was equipped with a nuclear factor of activated T cells (NFAT)-luciferase reporter construct to allow measurement of TCR-mediated activation. To establish the feasibility of this tumor-specific TCR transduction, we cloned the TCR genes of a known T-cell clone specific for the tumor antigen CAMEL (CTL-recognized antigen on melanoma) into a retroviral construct. Jurkat reporter cells transduced with this construct, Jrt-TCRalpha3beta5, were tested for their reactivity against CAMEL-expressing melanoma cells, peptide-loaded T2 cells and CAMEL-transfected COS-1 cells. The melanoma cell lines were poorly recognized, but peptide-pulsed and -transfected cells effectively stimulated NFAT signaling. The activation of TCR(+) Jurkat reporter cells was shown to be dependent on the antigen density on the target cells and the expression level of the coreceptor CD8 on the Jurkat cells. To verify the benefit of this TCR reconstitution method for identification of novel antigens, pools of the cDNA library from which CAMEL was originally cloned were transfected in COS-1 cells and screened with Jrt-TCRalpha3beta5. Identical cDNA pools were found that were positive with these cells and with the CAMEL-specific CTL clone. Our results illustrate that TCR-reconstituted Jurkat reporter cells are a useful tool in the identification of novel tumor antigens by cDNA expression cloning.