INFLUENCE OF ANTIGEN PROCESSING ON THYMIC T-CELL SELECTION

The design of a specific blocking peptide for the immunosuppressive therapy of an autoimmune disease requires the identification of peptides of an autoantigen that are physiologically processed in vivo and bind to MHC-encoded membrane glycoproteins. However, knowledge of how an antigen is physiologically processed by antigen-presenting cells (APC) in vivo, particularly in the thymus, is lacking. It is also unknown whether the processing of an antigen by different APC in the thymus can influence thymic T-cell selection. This is an important consideration for attempts to delete or inactivate autoreactive T cells that elicit autoimmune disease. To address these issues, we investigated the processing of biosynthetically labelled recombinant human insulin (rHI), a model autoantigen, injected into mice and characterized the insulin peptides associated with MHC class II molecules on thymic epithelial cells and dendritic cells. These APC were found to differ in the way they process insulin. The detection of MHC-class-II-bound insulin peptides on the surface of the epithelial cells but not the dendritic cells correlated with their capacity to either present or not present insulin to T cells, respectively. Thus, antigen processing may control the appearance of different peptide-MHC class II complexes on thymic APC that mediate positive and negative selection, and thereby influence the development of the T-cell repertoire. Our findings could have important bearing on the future design of synthetic blocking peptides that reduce or eliminate the onset of autoimmune disease.