1. Academic Validation
  2. A liver immune rheostat regulates CD8 T cell immunity in chronic HBV infection

A liver immune rheostat regulates CD8 T cell immunity in chronic HBV infection

  • Nature. 2024 Jul;631(8022):867-875. doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-07630-7.
Miriam Bosch # 1 Nina Kallin # 1 Sainitin Donakonda 1 Jitao David Zhang 2 Hannah Wintersteller 1 Silke Hegenbarth 1 Kathrin Heim 3 Carlos Ramirez 4 Anna Fürst 1 Elias Isaac Lattouf 5 Martin Feuerherd 5 Sutirtha Chattopadhyay 1 Nadine Kumpesa 2 Vera Griesser 2 Jean-Christophe Hoflack 2 Juliane Siebourg-Polster 2 Carolin Mogler 6 Leo Swadling 7 Laura J Pallett 7 Philippa Meiser 1 Katrin Manske 1 Gustavo P de Almeida 8 Anna D Kosinska 9 10 11 Ioana Sandu 12 Annika Schneider 1 Vincent Steinbacher 1 Yan Teng 9 Julia Schnabel 13 Fabian Theis 14 Adam J Gehring 15 16 Andre Boonstra 17 Harry L A Janssen 17 18 Michiel Vandenbosch 19 Eva Cuypers 19 Rupert Öllinger 20 Thomas Engleitner 20 Roland Rad 20 Katja Steiger 21 Annette Oxenius 12 Wan-Lin Lo 22 Victoria Klepsch 23 Gottfried Baier 23 Bernhard Holzmann 24 Mala K Maini 6 Ron Heeren 19 Peter J Murray 25 Robert Thimme 3 Carl Herrmann 4 5 Ulrike Protzer 8 9 10 Jan P Böttcher 1 Dietmar Zehn 8 Dirk Wohlleber 1 Georg M Lauer 5 Maike Hofmann 3 Souphalone Luangsay 2 Percy A Knolle 26 27 28
Affiliations

Affiliations

  • 1 Institute of Molecular Immunology, School of Medicine and Health, Technical University of Munich (TUM), Munich, Germany.
  • 2 Roche Pharmaceutical Research and Early Development (pRED), Roche Innovation Center Basel, Basel, Switzerland.
  • 3 Third Department of Medicine, University Hospital Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany.
  • 4 Health Data Science Unit, Biomedical Genomics Group, Bioquant, Faculty of Medicine Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany.
  • 5 Division of Gastroenterology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
  • 6 Institute of Pathology, School of Medicine and Health, TUM, Munich, Germany.
  • 7 Division of Infection and Immunity, Institute of Immunity and Transplantation, University College London, London, UK.
  • 8 Institute of Immunology and Animal Physiology, School of Life Science, TUM, Munich, Germany.
  • 9 Institute of Virology, School of Medicine and Health, TUM, Munich, Germany.
  • 10 Helmholtz Zentrum München, Munich, Germany.
  • 11 German Center for Infection Research, Munich site, Munich, Germany.
  • 12 Institute of Microbiology, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland.
  • 13 Institute of Machine Learning and Biomedical Imaging, Helmholtz Zentrum Munich, Munich, Germany.
  • 14 Institute of Computational Biology, TUM, Munich, Germany.
  • 15 Toronto Centre for Liver Disease and Toronto General Hospital Research Institute, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
  • 16 Department of Immunology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
  • 17 Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Erasmus University Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
  • 18 Toronto General Hospital, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
  • 19 Institute of Multimodal Imaging, University of Maastricht, Maastricht, The Netherlands.
  • 20 Institute of Molecular Oncology and Functional Genomics, School of Medicine and Health, TUM, Munich, Germany.
  • 21 Comparative Experimental Pathology, School of Medicine and Health, TUM, Munich, Germany.
  • 22 Department of Pathology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA.
  • 23 Institute of Cell Genetics, Medical University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria.
  • 24 Department of Surgery, School of Medicine and Health, TUM, Munich, Germany.
  • 25 Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Martinsried, Munich, Germany.
  • 26 Institute of Molecular Immunology, School of Medicine and Health, Technical University of Munich (TUM), Munich, Germany. percy.knolle@tum.de.
  • 27 German Center for Infection Research, Munich site, Munich, Germany. percy.knolle@tum.de.
  • 28 Institute of Molecular Immunology, School of Life Science, TUM, Munich, Germany. percy.knolle@tum.de.
  • # Contributed equally.
Abstract

Chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) Infection affects 300 million patients worldwide1,2, in whom virus-specific CD8 T cells by still ill-defined mechanisms lose their function and cannot eliminate HBV-infected hepatocytes3-7. Here we demonstrate that a liver immune rheostat renders virus-specific CD8 T cells refractory to activation and leads to their loss of effector functions. In preclinical models of persistent Infection with hepatotropic viruses such as HBV, dysfunctional virus-specific CXCR6+ CD8 T cells accumulated in the liver and, as a characteristic hallmark, showed enhanced transcriptional activity of cAMP-responsive element modulator (CREM) distinct from T cell exhaustion. In patients with chronic hepatitis B, circulating and intrahepatic HBV-specific CXCR6+ CD8 T cells with enhanced CREM expression and transcriptional activity were detected at a frequency of 12-22% of HBV-specific CD8 T cells. Knocking out the inhibitory CREM/ICER isoform in T cells, however, failed to rescue T cell immunity. This indicates that CREM activity was a consequence, rather than the cause, of loss in T cell function, further supported by the observation of enhanced phosphorylation of protein kinase A (PKA) which is upstream of CREM. Indeed, we found that enhanced cAMP-PKA-signalling from increased T cell adenylyl cyclase activity augmented CREM activity and curbed T cell activation and effector function in persistent hepatic Infection. Mechanistically, CD8 T cells recognizing their antigen on hepatocytes established close and extensive contact with liver sinusoidal endothelial cells, thereby enhancing adenylyl cyclase-cAMP-PKA signalling in T cells. In these hepatic CD8 T cells, which recognize their antigen on hepatocytes, phosphorylation of key signalling kinases of the T cell receptor signalling pathway was impaired, which rendered them refractory to activation. Thus, close contact with liver sinusoidal endothelial cells curbs the activation and effector function of HBV-specific CD8 T cells that target hepatocytes expressing viral antigens by means of the adenylyl cyclase-cAMP-PKA axis in an immune rheostat-like fashion.

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