β-Amino Acid Scan of a Class I Major Histocompatibility Complex-restricted Alloreactive T-cell Epitope

Abstract

An HLA-B27-restricted self-octapeptide known to react with an alloreactive T-cell receptor has been modified by systematic substitution of a β-amino acid for the natural α-amino acid residue, over the whole length of the parent epitope. All modified peptides were shown to bind to recombinant HLA-B*2705 and induce stable major histocompatibility complex-peptide complexes, but with some variation depending on the position of the β-amino acid on the peptide sequence. Alteration of the natural peptide sequence at the two N-terminal positions (positions 1 and 2) decreases binding affinity and thermodynamic stability of the refolded complex, but all other positions (from position 3 to the C-terminal residue) were insensitive to the β-amino acid substitution. All modified peptides were recognized by an alloreactive T-cell clone specific for the parent epitope with decreased efficiency, to an extent dependent of the position that was modified. Furthermore, the introduction of a single β-amino acid at the first two positions of the modified peptide was shown to be sufficient to protect them against enzymatic cleavage. Thus, β-amino acids represent new interesting templates for alteration of T-cell epitopes to design either synthetic vaccines of T-cell receptor antagonists.