Defining the alloreactive T cell repertoire using high-throughput sequencing of mixed lymphocyte reaction culture

PLoS One. 2014 Nov 3;9(11):e111943. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0111943. eCollection 2014.

Abstract

The cellular immune response is the most important mediator of allograft rejection and is a major barrier to transplant tolerance. Delineation of the depth and breadth of the alloreactive T cell repertoire and subsequent application of the technology to the clinic may improve patient outcomes. As a first step toward this, we have used MLR and high-throughput sequencing to characterize the alloreactive T cell repertoire in healthy adults at baseline and 3 months later. Our results demonstrate that thousands of T cell clones proliferate in MLR, and that the alloreactive repertoire is dominated by relatively high-abundance T cell clones. This clonal make up is consistently reproducible across replicates and across a span of three months. These results indicate that our technology is sensitive and that the alloreactive TCR repertoire is broad and stable over time. We anticipate that application of this approach to track donor-reactive clones may positively impact clinical management of transplant patients.

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Cells, Cultured
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Organ Transplantation
  • Receptors, Antigen, T-Cell / genetics*
  • Receptors, Antigen, T-Cell / immunology
  • T-Lymphocytes / cytology
  • T-Lymphocytes / immunology*
  • Transplantation Immunology / genetics*

Substances

  • Receptors, Antigen, T-Cell

Associated data

  • Dryad/10.5061/dryad.3F60C

Grants and funding

The authors have no support or funding to report.