Figure 3. Lovasatin does not affect the specific cytotoxic activity of EBV-specific and CMV-specific CTL lines.

(A) The specific killing activity of the EBV-specific CTLs. Previously characterized LMP2-CTL lines and the corresponding autologous LCLs were recovered in culture²⁷. Autologous LCLs were labeled with DDAO-SE and incubated for 4 hours with corresponding CTL lines at the E/T ratios indicated, in the presence of 10 μM lovastatin, 10 μM pravastatin, or the vehicle DMSO. Killing of autologous LCLs pulsed with LMP2 peptides was measured by the percentage of caspase-3 positive cells. A representative LMP2-CTL line data (left) and means of the percent specific killing from target cells ± SD of the three CTL lines at E:T ratio of 10:1 (right) were presented. (B) The specific killing activity of the CMV-specific CTLs. Two previously characterized pp65-CTL lines were recovered in culture²⁶. The PHA blasts were pulsed with CMVpp65 PepMix (CMVpp65 target) in the presence of 10 μM lovastatin, 10 μM pravastatin, or the vehicle DMSO as indicated, and PHA blasts pulsed with Adv-hexon PepMix (Adv-hexon target) as control. The data were the percentage of caspase positive targets by two individual pp65-CTL lines at E:T of 20:1 and 10:1.