English
 
Help Privacy Policy Disclaimer
  Advanced SearchBrowse

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Released

Journal Article

Clonal tracking of autoaggressive T cells in polymyositis by combining laser microdissection, single-cell PCR, and CDR3-spectratype analysis

MPS-Authors
/persons/resource/persons38893

Hofbauer,  Monika
Department: Neuroimmunology / Wekerle, MPI of Neurobiology, Max Planck Society;

/persons/resource/persons39114

Wekerle,  Hartmut
Department: Neuroimmunology / Wekerle, MPI of Neurobiology, Max Planck Society;

/persons/resource/persons38805

Dornmair,  Klaus
Department: Neuroimmunology / Wekerle, MPI of Neurobiology, Max Planck Society;

/persons/resource/persons38855

Goebels,  Norbert
Department: Neuroimmunology / Wekerle, MPI of Neurobiology, Max Planck Society;

External Resource
No external resources are shared
Fulltext (restricted access)
There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.
Fulltext (public)
There are no public fulltexts stored in PuRe
Supplementary Material (public)
There is no public supplementary material available
Citation

Hofbauer, M., Wiesener, S., Babbe, H., Roers, A., Wekerle, H., Dornmair, K., et al. (2003). Clonal tracking of autoaggressive T cells in polymyositis by combining laser microdissection, single-cell PCR, and CDR3-spectratype analysis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 100(7), 4090-4095. doi:10.1073/pnas.023618310.


Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0012-232A-8
Abstract
Clonal expansions of CD8+ T cells have been identified in muscle and blood of polymyositis patients by PCR techniques, including T cell receptor (TCR) complementarity-determining region (CDR)3 length analysis (spectratyping). To examine a possible pathogenic role of these clonally expanded T cells, we combined CDR3 spectratyping with laser microdissection and single-cell PCR of individual myocytotoxic T cells that contact, invade, and destroy a skeletal muscle fiber. First, we screened cDNA from muscle biopsy specimens by CDR3 spectratyping for expanded TCR chain variable region (BV) sequences. To pinpoint the corresponding T cells in tissue, we stained cryostat sections with appropriate anti-TCR BV mAbs, isolated single BV+ T cells that directly contacted or invaded a muscle fiber by laser-assisted microdissection, and amplified their TCR BV chain sequences from rearranged genomic DNA. In this way, we could relate the oligoclonal peaks identified by CDR3-spectratype screening to morphologically characterized microdissected T cells. In one patient, a large fraction of the microdissected T cells carried a common TCR-BV amino acid CDR3 motif and conservative nucleotide exchanges in the CDR3 region, suggesting an antigen-driven response. In several cases, we tracked these T cell clones for several years in CD8+ (but not CD4+) blood lymphocytes and in two patients also in consecutive muscle biopsy specimens. During immunosuppressive therapy, oligoclonal CDR3-spectratype patterns tended to revert to more polyclonal Gaussian distribution-like patterns. Our findings demonstrate that CDR3 spectratyping and single-cell analysis can be combined to identify and track autoaggressive T cell clones in blood and target tissue. This approach should be applicable to other inflammatory and autoimmune disorders.