CIITA-transduced glioblastoma cells uncover a rich repertoire of clinically relevant tumor-associated HLA-II antigens
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ABSTRACT: CD4+ T cell responses are crucial for inducing and maintaining effective anti-cancer immunity, and the identification of HLA-II cancer-specific epitopes is key to the development of potent cancer immunotherapies. In many tumor types, and especially in glioblastoma (GBM), HLA-II complexes are hardly ever naturally expressed. Hence, little is known about immunogenic HLA-II epitopes in GBM. With stable expression of CIITA coupled to a detailed and sensitive mass spectrometry based immunopeptidomics analysis, we here uncovered a remarkable breadth of the HLA-ligandome in HROG02, HROG17 and RA GBM cell lines. The effect of CIITA expression on the induction of the HLA-II presentation machinery was striking in each of the three cell lines, and it was significantly higher compared to IFNɣ treatment. In total, we identified 16,123 unique HLA-I peptides and 32,690 unique HLA-II peptides. In order to genuinely define the identified peptides as true HLA ligands, we carefully characterized their association with the different HLA allotypes. In addition, we identified 138 and 279 HLA-I and HLA-II ligands, respectively, most of which are novel in GBM, derived from known GBM-associated tumor-antigens that have been used as source proteins for a variety of GBM vaccines. Our data further indicate that CIITA-expressing GBM cells acquired an antigen presenting cell-like phenotype as we found that they directly present external proteins as HLA-II ligands. Not only that CIITA-expressing GBM cells are attractive models for antigen discovery endeavors, but such engineered cells have great therapeutic potential through massive presentation of a diverse antigenic repertoire.
INSTRUMENT(S): Q Exactive
ORGANISM(S): Homo Sapiens (human)
DISEASE(S): Brain Cancer
SUBMITTER: Michal Bassani-Sternberg
LAB HEAD: Michal Bassani-Sternberg
PROVIDER: PXD020079 | Pride | 2021-02-03
REPOSITORIES: Pride
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