Targeting Weak Antigens to CD64 Elicits Potent Humoral Responses in Human CD64 Transgenic Mice

Abstract

Previous studies have documented that targeting foreign Ags to IgG FcγR leads to enhanced Ag-specific responses in vitro and in vivo. However, the ability to overcome immunologic nonresponsiveness by targeting poorly immunogenic Ags to FcγR has not been investigated. To address this question in a simple model, we immunized transgenic mice expressing human CD64 (FcγRI) and their nontransgenic littermates with Fab′ derived from the murine anti-human CD64 mAb m22. The m22 Fab′ served as both the targeting molecule and the Ag. We found that only CD64-expressing mice developed anti-Id titers to m22. Furthermore, chemically linked multimers of m22 Fab′, which mediated efficient internalization of the human CD64, were significantly more potent than monomeric m22 F(ab′)2 at inducing anti-Id responses. In all cases, the humoral responses were specific for m22 Id and did not react with other murine IgG1 Fab′ fragments. Chemical addition of a second murine Fab′ (520C9 anti-human HER2/neu) to m22 Fab′ multimers demonstrated that IgG1 and IgG2a anti-Id titers could be generated to 520C9 only in the CD64-expressing mice. These results show that targeting to CD64 can overcome immunological nonresponsiveness to a weak immunogen. Therefore, targeting to CD64 may be an effective method to enhance the activity of nonimmunogenic tumor vaccines.