Immunity & Ageing (Nov 2022)

Cytomegalovirus infection reduced CD70 expression, signaling and expansion of viral specific memory CD8+ T cells in healthy human adults

  • Jian Lu,
  • Guobing Chen,
  • Arina Sorokina,
  • Thomas Nguyen,
  • Tonya Wallace,
  • Cuong Nguyen,
  • Christopher Dunn,
  • Stephanie Wang,
  • Samantha Ellis,
  • Guixin Shi,
  • Julia McKelvey,
  • Alexei Sharov,
  • Yu-Tsueng Liu,
  • Jonathan Schneck,
  • Nan-ping Weng

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12979-022-00307-7
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 19, no. 1
pp. 1 – 14

Abstract

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Abstract Background Cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection leads to effector memory CD8+ T cell expansion and is associated with immune dysfunction in older adults. However, the molecular alterations of CMV-specific CD8+ T cells in CMV infected healthy young and middle-aged adults has not been fully characterized. Results We compared CD8+ T cells specific for a CMV epitope (pp65495-503, NLV) and an influenza A virus (IAV) epitope (M158-66, GIL) from the same young and middle-aged healthy adults with serum positive for anti-CMV IgG. Compared to the IAV-specific CD8+ T cells, CMV-specific CD8+ T cells contained more differentiated effector memory (TEM and TEMRA) cells. Isolated CMV-specific central memory (TCM) but not naïve (TN) cells had a significant reduced activation-induced expansion in vitro compared to their IAV-specific counterparts. Furthermore, we found that CD70 expression was reduced in CMV-specific CD28+CD8+ TCM and that CD70+ TCM had better expansion in vitro than did CD70- TCM. Mechanistically, we showed that CD70 directly enhanced MAPK phosphorylation and CMV-specific CD8+ TCM cells had a reduced MAPK signaling upon activation. Lastly, we showed that age did not exacerbate reduced CD70 expression in CMV- specific CD8+ TCM cells. Conclusion Our findings showed that CMV infection causes mild expansion of CMV-NLV-specific CD8+ T cells, reduced CD70 expression and signaling, and proliferation of CMV-NLV-specific CD8+ TCM cells in young and middle-aged healthy adults and revealed an age-independent and CMV infection-specific impact on CD8+ memory T cells.

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