Maintenance of clonal anergy by endogenously produced IL-10

Inadequate co-stimulation of tumor reactive T cells may contribute to the fact that antigenic tumors are not normally rejected by the immune system. We recently reported that the induction of profound unresponsiveness in a T cell clone by melanoma cells expressing MHC class II antigens may provide a mechanism for these tumor cells to escape immunosurveillance. Here we demonstrate that two T cell clones (sTC3 and sTS5) produced high amounts of IL-10 after being rendered anergic by autologous melanoma cells. Co-culture of these T cell clones with melanoma cell transfectants expressing B7, which failed to induce anergy, resulted in a significantly lower production of IL-10. IL-10 production by the anergic T cell clones correlated with an impaired ability to produce IL-2 in response to TCR mediated activation. Neutralization of IL-10 reduced the duration of T cell unresponsiveness from 14 to only 4 days, but inhibition of IL-10 production during initiation of anergy showed no effect on it. Induction of the unresponsive state, as well as the subsequent IL-10 production in sTC3 cells, could be prevented by the addition of cyclosporin A to the primary co-culture of sTC3 and the autologous melanoma. Taken together, these results indicate that IL-10 is important for maintenance of T cell anergy induced by contact with nonprofessional antigen presenting cells such as MHC class II+ melanoma cells. Furthermore, we were able to detect IL-10 in serum from melanoma patients and IL-10 mRNA in tumor infiltrating lymphocytes isolated from melanoma metastases, suggesting an in vivo relevance of our in vitro findings.