TY - THES A1 - Hapke, Nils T1 - Cardiac antigen derived T cell epitopes in the frame of myocardial infarction T1 - T-Zell-Epitope von kardialen Antigenen im Kontext des Myokardinfarktes N2 - Cardiovascular disease and the acute consequence of myocardial infarc- tion remain one of the most important causes of morbidity and mortality in all western societies. While much progress has been made in mitigating the acute, life-threatening ischemia caused by infarction, heart failure of the damaged my- ocardium remains prevalent. There is mounting evidence for the role of T cells in the healing process after myocardial infarction, but relevant autoantigens, which might trigger and regulate adaptive immune involvement have not been discov- ered in patients. In this work, we discovered an autoantigenic epitope in the adrenergic receptor beta 1, which is highly expressed in the heart. This autoantigenic epitope causes a pro-inflammatory immune reaction in T cells isolated from pa- tients after myocardial infarction (MI) but not in control patients. This immune reaction was only observed in a subset of MI patients, which carry at least one allele of the HLA-DRB1*13 family. Interestingly, HLA-DRB1*13 was more com- monly expressed in patients in the MI group than in the control group. Taken together, our data suggests antigen-specific priming of T cells in MI patients, which leads to a pro-inflammatory phenotype. The primed T cells react to a cardiac derived autoantigen ex vivo and are likely to exhibit a similar phenotype in vivo. This immune phenotype was only observed in a certain sub- set of patients sharing a common HLA-allele, which was more commonly ex- pressed in MI patients, suggesting a possible role as a risk factor for cardiovas- cular disease. While our results are observational and do not have enough power to show strong clinical associations, our discoveries provide an essential tool to further our understanding of involvement of the immune system in cardiovascu- lar disease. We describe the first cardiac autoantigen in the clinical context of MI and provide an important basis for further translational and clinical research in cardiac autoimmunity. N2 - Die koronare Herzerkrankung und die akute Konsequenz des Myokardin- farktes (MI) sind eine der häufigsten Ursachen von Morbidität und Mortalität in unserer westlichen Gesellschaft. Obwohl es große Fortschritte in der Behand- lung von akut lebensbedrohlichen ischämischen Ereignissen gab, bleibt die re- sultierende Herzinsuffizienz nach Infarkt ein häufiges klinisches Problem. Immer mehr Evidenz weist auf eine wichtige Rolle von T-Zellen im Heilungsprozess nach MI hin, aber relevante Autoantigene, die adaptive Immunantworten auslö- sen und regulieren könnten, wurden in Patienten mit MI noch nicht entdeckt. In dieser Arbeit beschreiben wir ein Epitop des Adrenergen Rezeptors Beta 1, der im Herz hoch exprimiert ist und als Autoantigen fungiert. Dieses Au- toantigen verursacht eine pro-inflammatorische Immunreaktion in T-Zellen, die von MI-Patienten isoliert wurden, aber nicht in Kontrollpatienten. Diese Immun- reaktion beobchten wir jedoch nur in einem Teil der Patienten, der ein Allel der Familie HLA-DRB1*13 trägt. Interessanterweise sind MI-Patienten häufiger Trä- ger eines solchen Allels als Kontroll-Patienten. Zusammenfassend legen unsere Ergebnisse nahe, dass T-Zellen in MI- Patienten antigen-spezifisch aktiviert werden und einen pro-inflammatorischen Phänotyp ausbilden. Die aktivierten T-Zellen reagieren ex vivo auf ein kardiales Autoantigen und entwickeln vermutlich in vivo einen ähnlichen Phänotyp. Dieser ist abhängig von einem HLA-Allel, welches in Infarkt-Patienten häufiger war als in der Kontrollgruppe, was eine mögliche Rolle als Risikofaktor für kardiovasku- läre Erkrankungen suggeriert. Unsere Ergebnisse stellen eine wichtige Grundlage dar, um unser Ver- ständnis des Immunsystems in kardiovaskulären Erkrankungen zu vertiefen. Wir beschreiben in dieser Arbeit das erste kardiale Autoantigen, das im klinischen Kontext des Myokardinfarktes entdeckt wurde und bieten somit eine wichtige Grundlage für weitere translationale und klinische Forschung in der Immunkar- diologie. KW - Immunologie KW - Kardiologie KW - Immunkardiologie KW - Immunocardiology Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-301963 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Delgobo, Murilo A1 - Heinrichs, Margarete A1 - Hapke, Nils A1 - Ashour, DiyaaElDin A1 - Appel, Marc A1 - Srivastava, Mugdha A1 - Heckel, Tobias A1 - Spyridopoulos, Ioakim A1 - Hofmann, Ulrich A1 - Frantz, Stefan A1 - Ramos, Gustavo Campos T1 - Terminally Differentiated CD4\(^+\) T Cells Promote Myocardial Inflammaging JF - Frontiers in Immunology N2 - The cardiovascular and immune systems undergo profound and intertwined alterations with aging. Recent studies have reported that an accumulation of memory and terminally differentiated T cells in elderly subjects can fuel myocardial aging and boost the progression of heart diseases. Nevertheless, it remains unclear whether the immunological senescence profile is sufficient to cause age-related cardiac deterioration or merely acts as an amplifier of previous tissue-intrinsic damage. Herein, we sought to decompose the causality in this cardio-immune crosstalk by studying young mice harboring a senescent-like expanded CD4\(^+\) T cell compartment. Thus, immunodeficient NSG-DR1 mice expressing HLA-DRB1*01:01 were transplanted with human CD4\(^+\) T cells purified from matching donors that rapidly engrafted and expanded in the recipients without causing xenograft reactions. In the donor subjects, the CD4\(^+\) T cell compartment was primarily composed of naïve cells defined as CCR7\(^+\)CD45RO\(^-\). However, when transplanted into young lymphocyte-deficient mice, CD4\(^+\) T cells underwent homeostatic expansion, upregulated expression of PD-1 receptor and strongly shifted towards effector/memory (CCR7\(^-\) CD45RO\(^+\)) and terminally-differentiated phenotypes (CCR7\(^-\)CD45RO\(^-\)), as typically seen in elderly. Differentiated CD4\(^+\) T cells also infiltrated the myocardium of recipient mice at comparable levels to what is observed during physiological aging. In addition, young mice harboring an expanded CD4\(^+\) T cell compartment showed increased numbers of infiltrating monocytes, macrophages and dendritic cells in the heart. Bulk mRNA sequencing analyses further confirmed that expanding T-cells promote myocardial inflammaging, marked by a distinct age-related transcriptomic signature. Altogether, these data indicate that exaggerated CD4\(^+\) T-cell expansion and differentiation, a hallmark of the aging immune system, is sufficient to promote myocardial alterations compatible with inflammaging in juvenile healthy mice. KW - CD4+ T-cells KW - myocardial aging KW - inflammaging KW - NSG animals KW - immunosenescence KW - lymphocytes Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-229612 SN - 1664-3224 VL - 12 ER -