Abstracts (complete list) - Wissenschaft Online

Kathrin Hofer, Holger Kroenig, Heinke Conrad, Barbara Kast, Christian Peschel, Helga
Bernhard
Generation of Th1 lymphocyte clones against an
immunodominant epitope of NY-ESO-1
Since CD4+ T cells play a critical role in generating and maintaining antigen-specific
cellular and humoral immune responses our current study focuses on the generation of
T helper cells from healthy donors and multiple myeloma patients. Our approach is the
isolation of high avidity tumor antigen specific class - II- restricted T cell receptors
(TCRs) for an optimized T cell transfer strategy.
The Cancer Testis (CT) antigen NY-ESO-1 is one of the most immunogenic cancer
antigens eliciting strong humoral and cellular immune responses in tumor patients and
is a promising candidate antigen for successful adoptive T cell transfer.
We achieved to generate NY-ESO-1 specific T helper1 clones from HLA-DR1+ and HLA-
DR4+ healthy donors by stimulation of CD4+ T cells with autologous dendritic cells (DC)
pulsed with the NY-ESO-1 87-111 peptide known to be presented with HLA-DR1+ and
HLA-DR4+. The specifity of CD4+ T helper cell clones was determined by proliferation
assays and IFN gamma ELISPOT through screening with NY-ESO-187-111 peptide. By
limiting dilution of the NY-ESO-1-specific T cell populations we succeeded to isolate T
cell clones which recognized NY-ESO-1-pulsed target cells and DCs pulsed with NY-ESO-
1 protein.
The ability to isolate NY-ESO-1- specific T helper1 cells facilitates the development of T
cell transfer regiments which are based on class-II-restricted TCR-transduced T cells for
a treatment of patients with multiple myeloma.