The development of anti-drug Abs in response to biological products (BP) is a major drawback in the treatment of patients. Factors related to the patient, the treatment, and the product can influence BP immunogenicity. Among these factors, BP aggregates have been suggested to promote immunogenicity by acting as danger signals recognized by dendritic cells (DC) facilitating the establishment of an anti-BP CD4 T cell-dependent adaptive immune response leading to anti-drug Abs production. To date, little is known on the mechanism supporting the effect of aggregates on DCs and consequently on the T cell response. The aim of this work was to identify key signaling pathways involved in BP aggregate DC activation and T cell response. We generated aggregates by submitting infliximab (IFX), an immunogenic anti-TNF-α chimeric Ab, to heat stress. Our results showed that IFX aggregates were able to induce human monocyte-derived DC (moDC) maturation in a concentration-dependent manner. Aggregate-treated moDCs enhanced allogeneic T cell proliferation and IL-5, IL-9, and IL-13 production compared with native Ab-treated moDCs. We then investigated the implication of FcγRIIa and spleen tyrosine kinase (Syk) in DC activation and showed that they were both strongly implicated in moDC maturation induced by IFX aggregates. Indeed, we found that neutralization of FcγRIIa inhibited DC activation, and consequently, Syk inhibition led to a decrease in T cell proliferation and cytokine production in response to IFX aggregates. Taken together, our results bring new insight, to our knowledge, on how protein aggregates could induce DC and T cell activation via the FcγRIIa-Syk signaling pathway.
Copyright © 2020 by The American Association of Immunologists, Inc.