Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

How An Alloreactive T-Cell Receptor Achieves Peptide And Mhc Specificity, Yuan Wang, Nishant K. Singh, Timothy T. Spear, Lance M. Hellman, Kurt H. Piepenbrink, Rachel H. Mcmahan, Hugo R. Rosen, Craig W. Vander Kooi, Michael I. Nishimura, Brian M. Baker

Food for Health: Publications

T-cell receptor (TCR) allorecognition is often presumed to be relatively nonspecific, attributable to either a TCR focus on exposed major histocompatibility complex (MHC) polymorphisms or the degenerate recognition of allopeptides. However, paradoxically, alloreactivity can proceed with high peptide and MHC specificity. Although the underlying mechanisms remain unclear, the existence of highly specific alloreactive TCRs has led to their use as immunotherapeutics that can circumvent central tolerance and limit graft-versus-host disease. Here, we show how an alloreactive TCR achieves peptide and MHC specificity. The HCV1406 TCR was cloned from T cells that expanded when a hepatitis C virus (HCV)-infected HLA-A2− individual …