Infection with adenovirus is a major cause of infectious mortality in children following hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation. While adoptive transfer of epitope-specific T cells is a particularly effective therapeutic approach, there are few suitable adenoviral peptide epitopes described to date. Here, we describe the adenoviral peptide epitope FRKDVNMVL from hexon protein, and its variant FRKDVNMIL, that is restricted by human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-C*0702. Since HLA-C*0702 can be recognized by both T cells and natural killer (NK) cells, we characterized responses by both cell types. T cells specific for FRKDVNMVL were detected in peripheral blood mononuclear cells expanded from eight of ten healthy HLA-typed donors by peptide-HLA multimer staining, and could also be detected by cultured interferon γ ELISpot assays. Surprisingly, HLA-C*0702 was not downregulated during infection, in contrast to the marked downregulation of HLA-A*0201, suggesting that adenovirus cannot evade T cell responses to HLA-C*0702-restricted peptide epitopes. By contrast, NK responses were inhibited following adenoviral peptide presentation. Notably, presentation of the FRKDVNMVL peptide enhanced binding of HLA-C*0702 to the inhibitory receptor KIR2DL3 and decreased NK cytotoxic responses, suggesting that adenoviruses may use this peptide to evade NK responses. Given the immunodominance of FRKDVNMVL-specific T cell responses, apparent lack of HLA-C*0702 downregulation during infection, and the high frequency of this allotype, this peptide epitope may be particularly useful for adoptive T cell transfer therapy of adenovirus infection.
Keywords: adenovirus; adoptive transfer therapy; immunoevasion; peptide epitope.