Amastigote surface proteins of Trypanosoma cruzi are targets for CD8+ CTL

Amastigotes of Trypanosoma cruzi express surface proteins that, when released into the host cell cytoplasm, are processed and presented on the surface of infected cells in the context of MHC class I molecules to be recognized by CD8+ CTL. To further understand the role of CTL in T. cruzi infection, we used the available MHC class I peptide binding motifs to identify potential CTL target epitopes in two recently described T. cruzi amastigote surface proteins, ASP-1 and ASP-2. The predicted amino acid sequences of ASP-1 and ASP-2 were screened for H-2b allele-specific class I peptide motifs, and four peptides (PA11, PA12, PA13, and PA14) and six peptides (PA5, PA6, PA7, PA8, PA9, and PA10) were synthesized from ASP-1 and ASP-2, respectively. The majority of the peptides bound to some degree to H-2b class I MHC molecules, and six of 10 of the peptides stimulated spleen cells from T. cruzi-infected mice to lyse target cells sensitized with the homologous peptides. Short term T cell lines specific for three of these peptides also lysed T. cruzi-infected target cells. These results demonstrate that ASP-1 and ASP-2 are targets of in vivo generated CTLs and that this CTL response induced by T. cruzi infection is parasite and peptide specific, MHC restricted, and CD8 dependent.