Analysis of Schistosoma Japonicum Egg Antigen Epitopes Inducing T Lymphocyte Response in Humans.

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

We analyzed Schistosoma japonicum egg antigen molecules and epitopes which induced pathologically important T cell responses by the method of T-western. We isolated human T cell lines and clones (CD3+CD4+CD8-) from Japanese patients with chronic schistosomiasis japonica. Those T cells showed significant proliferation as well as cytokine production such as interleukin-2 and gamma-interferon under the stimulation of S. japonicum egg antigen in vitro. It was, thus, suggested that those T cells were involved in circum-oval granuloma formation in vivo. We tested those T cells in T-western experiments to identify the egg antigen molecules which induced and modulated T cell response in humans. Since the original T-western method of Young & Lamb had some defects, we applied an improved T-western method reported by Abou-Zeid et al. This gave improved sensitivity and reproducibility in evaluating T cell response. We observed that at least four egg antigen molecules, of which molecular weight were 16kD, 33kD, 48kD and 113kD, were likely to be main targets for pathological T cell responses in man. Of four egg antigen molecules, 33kD and 48kD molecules seemed to be important in immunomodulation because suppressor T cells recognized those two egg antigen molecules. Detailed epitope analysis is still underway ; however, we obtained data suggesting that epitopes on the 16kD molecule (s) were somehow related to IgG idiotypes expressed in human infected sera.