Li, Shuo, Floess, Stefan, Hamann, Alf, Gaudieri, Silvana, Lucas, Andrew, Hellard, Margaret, Roberts, Stuart, Paukovic, Geza, Plebanski, Magdalena, Loveland, Bruce E., Aitken, Campbell, Barry, Simon, Schofield, Louis, and Gowans, Eric J. (2009) Analysis of FOXP3+ regulatory T cells that display apparent viral antigen specificity during chronic hepatitis C virus infection. PLoS Pathogens, 5 (12). e1000707. pp. 1-13.

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Abstract

We reported previously that a proportion of natural CD25+ cells isolated from the PBMC of HCV patients can further upregulate CD25 expression in response to HCV peptide stimulation in vitro, and proposed that virus-specific regulatory T cells (Treg) were primed and expanded during the disease. Here we describe epigenetic analysis of the FOXP3 locus in HCV-responsive natural CD25+ cells and show that these cells are not activated conventional T cells expressing FOXP3, but hard-wired Treg with a stable FOXP3 phenotype and function. Of ~46,000 genes analyzed in genome wide transcription profiling, about 1% were differentially expressed between HCV-responsive Treg, HCV-non-responsive natural CD25+ cells and conventional T cells. Expression profiles, including cell death, activation, proliferation and transcriptional regulation, suggest a survival advantage of HCV-responsive Treg over the other cell populations. Since no Treg-specific activation marker is known, we tested 97 NS3-derived peptides for their ability to elicit CD25 response (assuming it is a surrogate marker), accompanied by high resolution HLA typing of the patients. Some reactive peptides overlapped with previously described effector T cell epitopes. Our data offers new insights into HCV immune evasion and tolerance, and highlights the non-self specific nature of Treg during infection.

Item ID:	35865
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	1553-7374
Additional Information:	© 2009 Li et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Funders:	National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (NHMRC), Burnet Institute
Projects and Grants:	NHMRC Grant 433908
Date Deposited:	31 Oct 2014 01:26
FoR Codes:	11 MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES > 1103 Clinical Sciences > 110309 Infectious Diseases @ 50% 11 MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES > 1107 Immunology > 110799 Immunology not elsewhere classified @ 50%
SEO Codes:	97 EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE > 970111 Expanding Knowledge in the Medical and Health Sciences @ 100%
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