Figure 1

B*2705 can promiscuously present the B*0702-restricted EBNA3A epitope to CD8⁺ T cells from a B*2705/B*0702 positive AS patient (Don 1.05.07). (A) Flow cytometry plots for HLA-B*2705/pEBNA3C (left panel) and HLA-B*0702/pEBNA3A (right panel) pentamer staining within CD8⁺ T cells of PBMCs cultured for 12 d with pEBNA3C and pEBNA3A synthetic peptides (20 µmol/L), respectively. Numbers indicate the percentage of pentamer-positive CD8⁺ T cells. Smaller panels show flow cytometry profiles of pEBNA3C- (left) or pEBNA3A-stimulated (right) PBMCs for staining with an irrelevant pentamer. (B) Detection of intracellular IFNγ production by PBMCs stimulated with pEBNA3C or pEBNA3A for 14 d and then re-stimulated by the indicated, untreated or peptide-pulsed C1R transfectants (30 µmol/L). Numbers represent the percentage of IFNγ-producing CD8⁺ T cells. (C) Assessment of cytotoxicity by representative pEBNA3A- (top) and pEBNA3C- (bottom) stimulated CTL lines against HLA-B*0702, -B*2705, -B*2709 C1R transfectants used as target cells. E/T ratio was 20:1. Bars represent the mean percentage of specific lysis ± SEM of three separate experiments.