B lymphoblastoid cell lines as efficient APC to elicit CD8+ T cell responses against a cytomegalovirus antigen

Potent and readily accessible APC are critical for development of immunotherapy protocols to treat viral disease and cancer. We have shown that B lymphoblastoid cell lines (BLCL) that stably express CMV phosphoprotein 65 (BLCLpp65), as a result of retroviral transduction, can be used to generate ex vivo CTL cultures that possess cytotoxicity against CMV and EBV. In this report, we demonstrate that the EBV-specific cytotoxicity in the BLCLpp65-primed culture had a spectrum of EBV-Ag recognition similar to that of the BLCL-primed counterpart, suggesting that retroviral transduction and expression of the CMV Ag would not compromise the Ag-presenting capacity of BLCL. In addition, BLCLpp65 appeared to present multiple natural pp65 epitopes, because pp65-specific CTL, which recognized different CMV clinical isolates, were generated in BLCLpp65-primed cultures from individuals with various HLA backgrounds. Consistent with a polyclonal expansion of virus-specific CTL, T cell lines established from the BLCLpp65-primed CTL cultures expressed different TCR-Vbeta Although most of the virus-specific T cell isolates were CD8+, EBV-specific CD4+ lines were also established from BLCLpp65-primed cultures. Western blot analysis revealed that the CD8+ lines, but not the CD4+ line, expressed granzyme B, consistent with features of classic CTL. Thus, our results suggested that BLCL stably expressing a foreign Ag might be used as a practical APC to elicit CD8+ T cell responses.