Figure 6
Cit-LL37 stimulates SLE/CLE LL37-specific T-cells better than native LL37. (A) T-cell proliferation (as in Fig. 1) of SLE LL37-specific T-cells to a low (1 μg/mL) and a high (10 μg/mL) dose of native LL37/cit-LL37 at T0 (A,B) in SLE patients at remission (T1, after therapy). Horizontal bars in A and B are the means, vertical bars are standard error of the mean, P values by Wilcoxon’s test. (C) Cumulative data of staining (as in Fig. S6A), with cognate/control tetramers (Table S5), showing the percent of CD4 T-cells double/single-stained with cognate peptide-MHC-tetramers (loaded with native LL37/cit-LL37 epitopes, and their respective controls), in PBMCs stimulated with native LL37, or with the same dose of cit-LL37, at T0 (upper panels), or at T1 (lower panels). Results are the mean plus/minus standard error of the mean of 5-to-6 experiments, performed with each patient. P-values were calculated between cognate tetramer and the correspondent control tetramer staining, by Wilcoxon signed-rank test. (D–G) Representative dual peptide-MHC-tetramer staining of four performed with each cognate peptide-MHC-tetramer and relative control (indicated), on SLE2/SLE22/CLE6 PBMCs stimulated for 7-days with cit-LL37 (peptide dose: 0.1 μg/mL for CLE6, 1 μg/mL for SLE2, 2 μg/mL for SLE22).
