CDR3 clonotype and amino acid motif diversity of BV19 expressing circulating human CD8 T cells.

Generating a detailed description of human T cell repertoire diversity is an important goal in the study of human immunology. The circulation is the source of most T cells used for studies in humans. Here we use high throughput sequencing of TCR BV19 transcripts from CD8 T cells derived from unmanipulated PBMC from an older HLA-A2 individual to provide a quantitative and qualitative description of the clonotypic CDR3 nucleotide and amino acid composition of the TCR β-chain from this subset of circulating CD8 T cells.

In vitro T-cell receptor V beta repertoire analysis may identify which T-cell V beta families mediate graft-versus-leukaemia and graft-versus-host responses after human leucocyte antigen-matched sibling stem cell transplantation.

We studied oligoclonal T-cell expansions of 24 T-cell receptor (TCR) V beta families in normal donor lymphocytes stimulated with patient's cells and in recipient blood after transplant, using a polymerase chain reaction-based assay (spectratyping). T cells from donor blood were incubated with separated myeloid leukaemia cells or T cells from the HLA-identical sibling recipient. In five of the six patients tested, the T-cell V beta skewing pattern observed in vitro was seen in vivo after transplant.

Infiltrating T cells during liver graft-versus-host disease show a restricted T-cell repertoire.

Data from animal models have shown that hepatic graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) may be mediated by donor T cells interacting with liver adhesion molecules, other minor histocompatibility antigens, or both. We hypothesized that T-cell infiltrates within a liver biopsy during clinical GVHD would show a restricted T-cell response because the T cells would be responding to a limited number of antigens. We studied the peripheral T-cell repertoire and the liver-infiltrating T-cell repertoire of a patient who developed skin GVHD and subsequent liver GVHD after a matched sibling bone marrow transplantation for acute myeloid leukemia.