Different antigen processing activities in dendritic cells macrophages and monocytes lead to uneven production of HIV epitopes and affect CTL recognition

摘要

Dendritic cells (DCs), macrophages (MPs) and monocytes are permissive to HIV. Whether they similarly process and present HIV epitopes to HIV-specific CD8 T cells is unknown despite the critical role of peptide processing and presentation for recognition and clearance of infected cells. Cytosolic peptidases degrade endogenous proteins originating from self or pathogens, exogenous antigens preprocessed in endolysosomes, thus shaping the peptidome available for endoplasmic reticulum (ER) translocation, trimming and MHC-I presentation. Here we compared the capacity of DCs, MPs and monocyte cytosolic extracts to produce epitope precursors and epitopes. We showed differences in the proteolytic activities and expression levels of cytosolic proteases between monocyte-derived DCs and MPs and upon maturation with LPS, R848 and CL097, with mature MPs having the highest activities. Using cytosol as a source of proteases to degrade epitope-containing HIV peptides, we showed by mass spectrometry that the degradation patterns of long peptides and the kinetics and amount of antigenic peptides produced differed among DCs, MPs and monocytes. Additionally, variable intracellular stability of HIV peptides prior to loading onto MHC may accentuate the differences in epitope availability for presentation by MHC-I between these subsets. Differences in peptide degradation led to 2- to 25-fold differences in the CTL responses elicited by the degradation peptides generated in DCs, MPs and monocytes. Differences in antigen processing activities between these subsets might lead to variations in the timing and efficiency of recognition of HIV-infected cells by CTLs and contribute to the unequal capacity of HIV-specific CTLs to control viral load.