Functional HLA-E studies in healthy individuals and MS-patients

Abstract

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic demyelinating disease of the central nervous system in which autoreactive T cells are key players. In animal models, Qa-1 restricted CD8+ T cells play an important role in the suppression of these autoreactive T cells. Qa-1, a non classical MHC class Ib molecule, is expressed on activated cells and recognized by a subtype of CD8+ T cells which become activated and exercise their regulatory function. Information about the functional role of human leukocyte antigen-E (HLA-E), the human variant of Qa-1, is limited. Therefore the aim of this study is to gain information about the HLA-E surface expression by immunologic cells during inflammatory and regulatory processes. The first objective of this project was to investigate whether the HLA-E surface expression is modulated after activation of immune cells in healthy controls (HC) as well as in MS patients. To reach this goal, cells were isolated from blood. After activation, these cells were stained wit