The role played by microRNA-155 in the regulation of T cell function

T cells chronically stimulated by their antigen often become dysfunctional and lose effector functions and proliferative capacity. This state of unresponsiveness is referred as T cell exhaustion. In order to investigate this, we developed a laboratory model, which allowed us to stimulate chronically in vivo a monoclonal population of CD4+ T cells. This model is based on the adoptive transfer of TCR transgenic CD4+ T cells specific for the male mHAg into male recipient mice. We found that systemic exposure to the male antigen modified deeply anti-male TcR-transgenic CD4+ T cells, plunging them into a state of functional unresponsiveness. Microarray analysis revealed that, in comparison with naive T cells, transferred T cells displayed a gene expression profile very similar to that of virus-specific exhausted CD8+ T cells. Moreover, like exhausted CD8+ T cells, exhausted CD4+ T cells lost their capacity to secrete IFN-ã as well as to proliferate in response to antigen stimulation, and T cell unresponsiveness was controlled by the engagement of programmed death receptor 1 (PD-1) present at the surface of T cells. <p>MicroRNAs are key molecules in shaping T cell function. In order to explore the possibility that chronic antigenic stimulation could shape the pool of microRNAs in exhausted anti-male CD4+ T cells that would account for specific changes in protein synthesis, we compared by microarray analysis the specific expression of microRNAs in naive CD4+ T cells and exhausted CD4+ T cells. Ninety five of them were found differentially expressed, among which, microRNA-155 (miR-155) displayed one of the highest changes. To identify the importance of miR-155 in T cell exhaustion, we analyzed miR-155-deficient CD4+ T cells after chronic exposure to systemic antigen. We found that, chronically-stimulated miR-155-/- CD4+ T cells were retained in a deeper state of unresponsiveness than miR-155+/+ CD4+ T cells. Furthermore, inhibition of PD-1/PD-L1 interaction did not promote antigen-dependent expansion of miR-155-deficient CD4+ T cells, nor did it stimulate T cell inflammation of several organs, contrary to what was observed in mice that received miR-155-sufficient CD4+ T cells. Thus, our observations demonstrated that miR-155 deficiency played a dominant role over PD-1-mediated inhibition of T cells and that miR-155 was required for restoring function in exhausted CD4+ T cells.<p>Next, we explored the mechanism by which exhausted miR-155-/- CD4+ T cells were kept in a deeper unresponsiveness state than miR-155+/+ counterparts. By comparative microarray analysis of gene expression between exhausted miR-155+/+ CD4+ T cells and miR-155-/- CD4+ T cells, heme oxygenase 1 (HO-1) was identified as a specific target of miR-155. Finally, inhibition of HO-1 activity restored the capacity of exhausted miR-155-/- CD4+ T cells to promote autoimmune inflammation in adoptively-transferred recipients. <p>Taken together, our study identified miR-155-mediated regulation of protein expression as a critical factor for restoring function in exhausted CD4+ T cells. Our results also present regulation of HO-1 expression in T cells as one of the mechanisms by which miR-155 promote T cell-driven inflammation.Doctorat en Sciences biomédicales et pharmaceutiques