1C. Crosses indicate the death of individual mice at the marked time point. Data were obtained from three separate experiments. “
“Male patients with female-stem-cell donors have better prognosis compared to female-to-male combinations due to Y-encoded minor histocompatibility antigens recognized by female-alloimmune-effector lymphocytes in the context of a graft-versus-leukemia (GvL) effect. We provide data

in a dog-model that the minor histocompatibility antigen UTY might be a promising target to further improve GvL-immune reactions after allogeneic-stem-cell transplantations. Female-canine-UTY-specific T cells (CTLs) were stimulated in vitro using autologous-DCs loaded with three Selleckchem GPCR Compound Library HLA-A2-restricted-UTY-derived peptides (3-fold-expansion), and specific T cell responses were determined in 3/6 female dogs. CTLs specifically recognized/lysed autologous-female-peptide-loaded DCs, but not naïve-autologous-female DCs and monocytes. They mainly recognized bone-marrow (BM) and to a lower extent DCs, monocytes, PBMCs and B-cells from DLA-identical-male littermates

and peptide-loaded T2-cells in an MHC-I-restricted manner. A UTY-/male-specific reactivity was also obtained in vivo after stimulation of a female dog with DLA-identical-male PBMCs. In summary, we demonstrated natural UTY processing and presentation in dogs. We showed that female-dog CTLs were specifically stimulated by HLA-A2-restricted-UTY peptides, thereby enabling recognition of find more DLA-identical-male cells, mainly BM cells. These observations suggest UTY as a promising candidate-antigen to improve GvL-reactions

in the course of immunotherapy. Allogeneic-stem-cell 2-hydroxyphytanoyl-CoA lyase transplantation (alloSCT) represents the only curative therapy for many patients with haematological-malignancies including leukemia. The therapeutic-effect is mediated by donor-derived immune-effector cells infused with donor-lymphocyte transfusion (DLT) after transplantation. This approach is successful in treating relapsed myeloid-malignancies [1]. The favourable graft-versus-leukemia (GvL) effect of donor-lymphocytes is mainly mediated by allo-reactive T cells recognizing antigens (Ags) on hematopoietic-cells including the malignant leukemic-cells of the patients [2, 3]. These T cells can also be reactive towards healthy-tissues and cause graft-versus-host-disease (GvHD) [4, 5]. Own clinical observations demonstrated that in haploidentical-transplantations female-donors (especially mothers) show a higher GvL-effect against male-recipients (particularly sons) compared to all other haploidentical donor-recipient combinations [6, 7] (H. J. Kolb, unpublished data). These reactions might be due to the existence of male-associated antigens [8]. The Y-chromosome coded minor histocompatibility antigen (mHA) UTY (ubiquitously-transcribed-tetratrico-peptide-repeat-gene, Y-linked) could be a new immunotherapeutically useful potential candidate-target structure [8, 9].