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HBZ is an immunogenic protein but not a target antigen for HTLV-1-specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes

¹ Ehime University Graduate School of Medicine;
² Kyoto University;
³ Jiaikai Imamura Hospital;
⁴ Université Montpellier 1

⁵ E-mail: yasukawa{at}m.ehime-u.ac.jp

Recently, HBZ has been reported to play an important role in the proliferation of adult T-cell leukemia (ATL) cells and might be a target of novel therapy for ATL. To develop a novel immunotherapy for ATL, we verified the feasibility of cellular immunotherapy targeting HBZ. We established an HBZ-specific and HLA-A*0201-restricted cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) clone. Detailed study using this CTL clone clearly showed that HBZ is certainly an immunogenic protein recognizable by human CTLs; however, HBZ-specific CTLs could not lyse ATL cells. Failure of HBZ-specific CTLs to recognize HTLV-1-infected cells might be due to a low level of HBZ protein expression in ATL cells and resistance of HTLV-1-infected cells to CTL-mediated cytotoxicity. Although HBZ plays an important role in the proliferation of HTLV-1-infected cells, it may also provide a novel mechanism that allows them to evade immune recognition.

Received 10 January 2009; accepted 21 April 2009.