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Infection and Immunity, February 2004, p. 824-832, Vol. 72, No. 2
0019-9567/04/$08.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/IAI.72.2.824-832.2004
Copyright © 2004, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Laboratory of Animal Physiology, Institut de Biologie et de Médecine Moléculaire (IBMM), Université Libre de Bruxelles, Gosselies,1 Laboratory of Parasitology, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Erasme, Belgium,4 Department of Molecular Biology, Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, Berlin, Germany,2 Departamento of Inmunologia, Escuela Nacional de Ciencias Biologicas, Instituto Politecnico Nacional, Mexico Distrito Federal, Mexico3
Received 8 August 2003/ Returned for modification 16 September 2003/ Accepted 10 November 2003
| ABSTRACT |
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| INTRODUCTION |
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Several candidate vaccines have already been evaluated in the mouse model of leishmaniases. Narrow-spectrum vaccines used live attenuated or killed parasites (6, 19, 29). They induced low levels of protective immunity in vaccinated patients who displayed a previous positive intradermal reaction to Leishmania (19). Expanded-spectrum vaccines used (i) genetically modified live Leishmania strains causing abortive infection in humans, (ii) recombinant bacteria or viruses carrying Leishmania antigen genes (21), and (iii) defined antigen vaccines such as LeIF (35) and LACK antigen (12). Broad-spectrum vaccines used genes coding for a protective antigen such as FML antigen (34). Evaluation of the protection conferred to patients by the expanded- and broad-spectrum vaccines is still in progress. The selection of parasite antigens used in such vaccination trials is still largely empirical, since information on the factors controlling Leishmania antigen presentation in vivo is lacking. Dendritic cells (DC), a lineage of professional antigen-presenting cells (APC), are known as sentinels of the immune system (36, 23, 16). Numerous studies have indicated that their capacity to activate antigen-specific naïve CD4+ or CD8+ T cells is strongly enhanced by the recognition of microbial products. During this process of maturation, major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class II-encoded and costimulatory molecules (CD40, CD80, CD86,...) are upregulated. The recent discovery of Toll-like receptors (TLRs) which are involved in the recognition of highly conserved microbial products called pathogen-associated molecular patterns has greatly contributed to our understanding of how DC detect pathogens (for reviews, see references 1, 14, and 17). TLRs display conserved cytoplasmic domains allowing them to use common signaling pathways, involving myeloid differentiation marker 88 (MyD88), rather than the interleukin-1 receptor (10).
Splenic DC maturation has been shown to occur in vivo in response to various microbial inflammatory stimuli involving lipopolysaccharide (LPS) (8), CpG oligodeoxynucleotide (CpG ODN) (15), and polyclonal T-cell activators (24, 26). In this study, we analyzed the ability of a Leishmania donovani parasite to induce splenic DC maturation in vivo. We demonstrate that intravenous (i.v.) injection of Leishmania parasites induces migration and maturation of splenic DC in vivo. This process requires live parasites, does not require parasite internalization, and is partially abolished in MyD88-deficient mice.
| MATERIALS AND METHODS |
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In vivo treatment. The indicated doses of anti-CD3 monoclonal antibody (MAb), CpG-ODN, or parasites in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) were injected i.v. into the lateral tail vein of mice. Control animals were injected with PBS.
Purification of low-density spleen cells. Spleens were digested with collagenase (CLSIII; Worthington Bio-chemical Corp., Freehold, N.J.), further dissociated in calcium-free medium, and separated into low- and high-density fractions on a Nycodenz gradient (Nycomed, Oslo, Norway), as previously described (20).
Cytofluorometric analysis. Cells were analyzed by flow cytometry with a FACSort cytometer (Becton Dickinson, Mountain View, Calif.). The cells were preincubated with saturating doses of 2.4G2 (a rat anti-mouse Fc receptor MAb; ATCC) for 10 min before staining to prevent antibody binding to Fc receptors. They were further labeled with phycoerythrin (PE)-coupled N418 (anti-CD11c) or (as indicated) fluorescein isothiocyanate-coupled antibodies, including AF6-120.1 (anti-I-Ab), 3.23 (anti-CD40), and 16-10A1 (anti-CD80) (all from Pharmingen; San Diego, Calif.), and DEC-205 (anti-CD205), 14.4.4-S (anti-I-E k,d), and GL1 (anti-CD86) (available through the ATCC and purified and labeled in our laboratory). Cells were gated according to size and scatter to eliminate dead cells and debris from analysis.
Immunohistochemistry. The immunohistochemical techniques used in this study are described in detail elsewhere (30). Briefly, spleen samples were harvested and frozen at -80°C. Frozen sections (6 to 10 µm thick) were fixed in acetone for 10 min and transferred to PBS. The sections were treated for 30 min with blocking reagent (Boehringer) (1% in PBS) to saturate the sites of nonspecific reactions. The slides were then stained with biotinylated N418 (anti-CD11c Mab; ATCC). They were further incubated with avidin-biotin-peroxidase complex (Vectastain ABC kit; Vector Laboratories, Burlingame, Calif.) and stained with a solution of diaminobenzidine tetrahydrochloride (DAB tablets; Sigma, St. Louis, Mo.), giving brown precipitates. Digitized images were captured using a charge-coupled-device color camera (Ikegami Tsushinki, Tokyo, Japan) and analyzed using CorelDraw 7 software (Corel, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada).
| RESULTS |
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Leishmania parasite-mediated DC maturation requires live parasites. Interestingly, the requirement for live parasites appeared absolute for the promotion of DC maturation, as demonstrated by the fact that heat-killed parasites did not induce DC maturation (Fig. 3). Note that neither 108 syngeneic spleen cells nor parasite culture supernatant injected i.v. induced detectable DC maturation (Fig. 3), demonstrating that parasite-mediated DC maturation was specific.
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MyD88-dependent TLR pathways are involved in induction of DC maturation in response to various microbial products (10). Muraille et al. recently showed that development of a Th1 protective immune response to L. major parasites required functional MyD88-dependent transduction pathways (25). We therefore investigated the role of MyD88 protein in Leishmania-induced DC maturation. We observed a reduced ability of L. donovani to induce DC maturation in MyD88-/- C57BL/6 mice (Fig. 6B). As a control (and consistent with the results of previous studies) (13), CpG ODN-induced DC maturation is completely abolished in MyD88-/- mice (Fig. 6B). In addition, we found no difference between the results of investigations of the kinetics of migration of CD11c+ cells from wild-type and MyD88-/- C57BL/6 mice, suggesting that MyD88 deficiency impaired DC maturation but not DC migration to T-cell areas (data not shown).
| DISCUSSION |
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In most studies, 1 x 107 to 2 x 107 L. Donovani parasites are used to induce the systemic disease in mice (28, 11). Our experiments demonstrated DC maturation at high doses (1 x 108 to 5 x 108) of parasites. To detect DC maturation in vivo by flow cytofluorometry analyses, it is necessary that most DC mature. We hypothesized that doses of parasites (102 to 103 parasites) at physiological levels (2) only induce asynchronous maturation of a minor fraction of DC which would therefore be undetectable. Moreover, during systemic administration of parasites, it is likely that only a fraction of parasites can interact with splenic DC. Such a dose effect is seen in many in vivo models of DC maturation. For example, only doses of LPS (8), staphylococcal superantigens (25), or bacterial DNA (CpG ODN) (15) administered at high and nonphysiological levels (10 to 100 µg) can induce detectable in vivo maturation of splenic DC.
Leishmania parasites induce DC maturation in RAG-/- mice, demonstrating that this phenomenon is independent of the presence of T and B cells. It has been shown that Leishmania parasites can infect DC (37, 27), suggesting that parasite-induced DC maturation can result from DC infection. In addition, macrophages can also be infected with Leishmania parasites (32) and produce inflammatory factors, such as tumor necrosis factor alpha (33), that are susceptible to promoting DC maturation. To determine whether parasite internalization by DC or other splenic cells is an obligatory step for the induction of DC maturation, we used a genetically modified strain of Leishmania expressing GFP protein. Our results demonstrate that DC are not infected at the time when they mature and that deletion of GR1+ CD11b+ CD11c- cells which are infected by Leishmania parasites does not affect DC maturation in vivo. These results are in accordance with those of a study on splenic DC maturation induced by Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium infection in vivo (39). Using a GFP-expressing bacterial strain, these authors have demonstrated that in vitro and in vivo activated DC are mostly uninfected. In a recent study (27), Muraille et al. also investigated how Leishmania parasite infection affects DC fate in vivo. When mice were chronically infected, we observed in situ that a fraction of infected DC (identified as CD11c+ cells) in draining lymph nodes from the primary lesion have reduced levels of MHC class II expression and no detectable expression of CD86 costimulatory molecules. Taken together, these data suggest that in vivo infection of DC by parasites is not required for the induction of DC maturation. Furthermore, maturation can be inhibited even during infection.
MyD88 is an adaptor protein that has been shown to play a key role in the TLR/IL-1R family transduction pathways (1, 14, 17). Recently, Muraille et al. observed that the development of a Th1 protective immune response to L. major parasites requires functional MyD88-dependent transduction pathways (25). The partial inhibition of parasite-induced DC maturation in MyD88-deficient mice argues in favor of an important role for MyD88-adaptator protein in the detection of Leishmania parasites by DC. Recent studies have demonstrated in vitro that TLR-2 binds lipophosphoglycan purified from L. major (9) and glycosylphosphatidylinositol anchors purified from Trypanosoma cruzi (7), demonstrating the presence of TLR ligands on Trypanosomatidae parasites. Globally, these observations suggest that recognition of Leishmania antigens by TLRs might be a prerequisite for DC maturation.
In conclusion, our work demonstrates that maturation of DC in vivo can be induced by L. donovani as well as by other species of Leishmania. The pathways of activation appear to be partially dependent of MyD88-adaptor protein but independent of parasite internalization and of interactions with T cells. Our observations also suggest that since MyD88 is used during Leishmania-mediated DC maturation, TLRs could provide a new and original system for the identification of a novel set of Leishmania antigens of interest for the further development of vaccines.
| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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This work was supported by grants from the Belgian Ministry of Scientific Policy (Action de Recherche Concertée) and the Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique (FNRS; Crédit aux chercheurs, Brussels, Belgium) and by the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB; Brussels, Belgium). E.M. is supported by the Fonds pour la Recherche Médicale (FRM; Bourse d'Acceuil de Chercheur Etranger, Paris, France), and C.D.T. is supported by the ULB.
| FOOTNOTES |
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