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. 2023 Aug 28;24(17):13335. doi: 10.3390/ijms241713335

Figure 4.

Figure 4

pEBNA3A-responsive CD8+ T cells are cross-reactive against a self-peptide. IFNγ production by CD8+ T cells from PBMCs stimulated with pEBNA3A (A) or pDYNEIN (B) in one representative subject out of 32 B*2705 carriers (29 AS patients, 3 HD) (A,B upper panels) and in 1 representative subject out of 13 B*07 carriers (4 AS patients, 2 PsA patients, 2 RA patients and 5 HD) (A,B lower panels). The cross-reactivity to pDYNEIN (A) and pEBNA3A (B) is also shown. The magnitude of pEBNA3A CD8+ T cell response was higher in B*27:05 subjects (C) than in B*07 carriers (D) and the cross-reactivity to pDYNEIN was found in both contexts, although at higher frequency in the B*07 background. The stimulation with pDYNEIN in B*27:05 (E) compared to B*07 (F) subjects produced a more frequent response in the latter group (50% vs. 92%), whereas the percentage of cross-reactive CD8+ T cell responses to pEBNA3A was high in both cases (94% vs. 92%). We arbitrarily considered the subjects as responders when the percentage of IFNγ-producing CD8+ T cells (expressed as the difference between the response to peptide as pre-pulsed APC with APC incubated with the medium alone) was ≥ 0.1. Friedman test; **** p value < 0.0001; *** p value < 0.001; ** p value < 0.005.