In vivo local expansion of clonal T cell subpopulations in renal cell carcinoma

Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is one human tumor to which the immune response may control the growth of tumor cells. These tumors are infiltrated by a large mononuclear infiltrate mainly composed of T lymphocytes. To characterize the lymphocytes infiltrating RCC, we analyzed the molecular structure of the T cell receptor (TCR) alpha and beta chains in tumor and paired peripheral blood lymphocytes from a series of 6 untreated patients. We first determined V alpha and V beta gene segment usage by PCR using a panel of V specific oligonucleotide primers (V alpha 1-w29 and V beta 1-w24). A highly diverse usage of TCR V alpha and V beta gene usage was observed in 5 of 6 tumors. In addition, the few tumor overexpressed V beta specificities detected by reverse transcription-PCR were shown to contain minor T cell expansions. Strikingly, 1 of the 6 tumor studied displayed a skewed TCR repertoire with V beta 4 transcript representing 25% of the TCR signals. Clonality of the tumor overexpressed V beta transcripts was analyzed by CDR3 size distribution analysis. In the particular tumor displaying a biased repertoire large expansions of T cell subpopulations were detected (particularly in V beta 4) specifically at the tumor site. Such T cells may be expanded locally in response to tumor antigens.