Prediction and identification of HLA-A*0201-restricted epitopes from leukemia-associated protein MLAA-22 which elicit cytotoxic T lymphocytes

Cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) play a critical role in the control of leukemia. However, few effective CTL epitopes have been identified to date yet. We previously reported that MLAA-22, a protein composed of 631 amino acid residues, is a novel acute myeloid leukemia (AML)-associated antigen. In the present study, ten high-score 9-mer peptides, which were selected from MLAA-22 by using ProPred1 and SYFPEITHI bioinformatics tools, were screened to identify HLA-A*0201-restricted-specific CTL epitopes. Monocyte-derived dendritic cells were generated in vitro to be used as antigen-presenting cells for the induction of CTLs. We found that peptide MLAA-22_379–387 (LLPNAIYKV) exhibited the highest binding affinity to HLA-A*0201 among all peptide candidates in the peptide-T2 binding assay. The percentage of positive T2 cells treated with MLAA-22_379–387 was about 96.3 %, which is even higher than that of the positive control peptide CML28_173–181 (95.1 %). MLAA-22_379–387-induced CTLs showed the most significant cytotoxic activity and apparent killing effects on the cell lines including THP-1 (human acute monocytic leukemia), A549, T2, U937, and MCF-7, and the specific lysis ratios were 83.8, 32.6, 64.4, 64.4, and 32.6 %, respectively, when the effector to target ratio (E/T) was 20:1. Specific lysis (%) of MLAA1 was significantly increased (P < 0.05, P < 0.001, respectively) in THP-1 cell than those in other cancer cell lines and were 28.5, 67.8, and 83.8 % at ratio 5:1, 10:1, and 20:1, respectively. Hence, MLAA-22_379–387 is a potential tumor-associated antigen target for AML immunotherapy.