Section of Transplantation, Department of Surgery, and.
Section of Rheumatology, Department of Medicine, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
JCI Insight. 2024 May 21;9(13):e176381. doi: 10.1172/jci.insight.176381.
Alloreactive memory, unlike naive, CD8+ T cells resist transplantation tolerance protocols and are a critical barrier to long-term graft acceptance in the clinic. We here show that semiallogeneic pregnancy successfully reprogrammed memory fetus/graft-specific CD8+ T cells (TFGS) toward hypofunction. Female C57BL/6 mice harboring memory CD8+ T cells generated by the rejection of BALB/c skin grafts and then mated with BALB/c males achieved rates of pregnancy comparable with naive controls. Postpartum CD8+ TFGS from skin-sensitized dams upregulated expression of T cell exhaustion (TEX) markers (Tox, Eomes, PD-1, TIGIT, and Lag3). Transcriptional analysis corroborated an enrichment of canonical TEX genes in postpartum memory TFGS and revealed a downregulation of a subset of memory-associated transcripts. Strikingly, pregnancy induced extensive epigenetic modifications of exhaustion- and memory-associated genes in memory TFGS, whereas minimal epigenetic modifications were observed in naive TFGS. Finally, postpartum memory TFGS durably expressed the exhaustion-enriched phenotype, and their susceptibility to transplantation tolerance was significantly restored compared with memory TFGS. These findings advance the concept of pregnancy as an epigenetic modulator inducing hypofunction in memory CD8+ T cells that has relevance not only for pregnancy and transplantation tolerance, but also for tumor immunity and chronic infections.
同种异体反应性记忆 T 细胞不同于幼稚 T 细胞,它们能够抵抗移植耐受方案,是临床中实现长期移植物接受的关键障碍。我们在此表明,半同种异体妊娠成功地将记忆胎儿/移植物特异性 CD8+T 细胞(TFGS)重编程为低功能状态。携带由排斥 BALB/c 皮肤移植物产生的记忆 CD8+T 细胞的雌性 C57BL/6 小鼠与 BALB/c 雄性小鼠交配,其妊娠率与幼稚对照组相当。致敏母鼠产后的 CD8+TFGS 上调了 T 细胞耗竭(TEX)标志物(Tox、Eomes、PD-1、TIGIT 和 Lag3)的表达。转录分析证实了产后记忆 TFGS 中经典 TEX 基因的富集,并揭示了一组记忆相关转录本的下调。引人注目的是,妊娠诱导了记忆 TFGS 中耗竭和记忆相关基因的广泛表观遗传修饰,而在幼稚 TFGS 中则观察到最小的表观遗传修饰。最后,产后记忆 TFGS 持久地表达了耗竭富集表型,与记忆 TFGS 相比,其对移植耐受的敏感性显著恢复。这些发现推进了妊娠作为一种表观遗传调节剂的概念,它可以诱导记忆 CD8+T 细胞的低功能状态,这不仅与妊娠和移植耐受有关,而且与肿瘤免疫和慢性感染有关。