CIITA enhances HIV-1 attachment to CD4+ T cells leading to enhanced infection and cell depletion

Activated CD4(+) T cells are more susceptible to HIV infection than resting T cells; the reason for this remains unresolved. Induction of CIITA and subsequent expression of the MHC class II isotype HLA-DR are hallmarks of CD4(+) T cell activation; therefore, we investigated the role of CIITA expression in T cells during HIV infection. CIITA-expressing SupT1 cells display enhanced virion attachment in a gp160/CD4-dependent manner, which results in increased HIV infection, virus release, and T cell depletion. Although increased attachment and infection of T cells correlated with HLA-DR surface expression, Ab blocking, transient expression of HLA-DR without CIITA, and short hairpin RNA knockdown demonstrate that HLA-DR does not directly enhance susceptibility of CIITA-expressing cells to HIV infection. Further analysis of the remaining MHC class II isotypes, HLA-DP and HLA-DQ, MHC class I isotypes, HLA-A, HLA-B, and HLA-C, and the class II Ag presentation genes, invariant chain and HLA-DM, demonstrate that these proteins likely do not contribute to CIITA enhancement of HIV infection. Finally, we demonstrate that in activated primary CD4(+) T cells as HLA-DR/CIITA expression increases there is a corresponding increase in virion attachment. Overall, this work suggests that induction of CIITA expression upon CD4(+) T cell activation contributes to enhanced attachment, infection, virus release, and cell death through an undefined CIITA transcription product that may serve as a new antiviral target.