Generation of cytolytic T-cell cultures displaying measles virus specificity and human histocompatibility leukocyte antigen restriction.

In the present study, peripheral blood lymphocytes from eight randomly selected, healthy, measles virus-seropositive donors were used to initiate and expand T-cell cultures during secondary immune response in vitro. Five of the donors yielded continuously growing T-cell cultures which showed reproducible strong lytic activities towards measles virus-infected autologous fibroblasts. Uninfected or herpes simplex virus-infected targets were weakly susceptible to these effectors. By contrast, T-cell cultures from three other seropositive donors expressed comparable lytic activities for measles virus- or herpes simplex virus-infected targets, but not for uninfected autologous targets. The five T-cell cytolytic cultures which revealed measles virus specificity also displayed human histocompatibility leukocyte antigen (HLA)-A and HLA-B restriction, i.e, were lytic for targets sharing HLA-A or HLA-B or both with them. Additionally, it was found that a monoclonal anti-HLA antibody (W6/32) could effectively block the measles virus-specific and HLA-A- and HLA-B-related lytic activities of these cytotoxic T-lymphocytes. The specificity of this blocking effect was reflected by the inefficacy of a monoclonal anti-HLA-DR antibody to block the cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-mediated lysis.