Murine Peyer’s Patches are Capable of Generating a Cytotoxic T Cell (CTL) Response to Nominal Antigens

The experiments described in this report were designed to determine whether murine Peyer’s patches are capable of generating a cytotoxic T cell (CTL) response to nominal (non-MHC encoded) antigens. To date, Kagnoff (1) is the only researcher who has been able to directly demonstrate CTL activity in Peyer’s patches. He demonstrated that a cytotoxic T cell response could be detected in Peyer’s patches from mice chronically fed tumor cells that were mismatched at the major histocompatibility locus. However, he was unable to demonstrate a similar response in Peyer’s patches when mice were chronically fed tumor cells bearing minor histocompatibility differences. While his study demonstrated that a CTL response could occur in Peyer’s patches, the generation of allospecific CTL’s, whose precursors are present at high frequency among normal T cells (2), may not be representative of the potential of Peyer’s patches to generate CTL activity directed to nominal antigens. We have utilized reovirus serotype 1 (reo 1) as a model nominal antigen to determine whether intraduodenally applied virus induces a detectable CTL response in murine Peyer’s patches.