Persistence of MHC DR nonexpression on swine cells by introduction of a mutated MHC class II transactivator gene: a comparison with the effect induced by antisense RNA.

CIITA (class II transactivator) is a coactivator essential for trans- cription of MHC class II genes. In this study, a construct with a mutated CIITA gene with N-terminal domains depleted was constructed. This mutated CIITA (mCIITA) was able to repress DR and DQ expression in 45.0–60.0% of the mCIITA-transfected clones of swine endothelial cell line PIEC and in B cell line L23, as well as in human cell lines HeLa and Raji. Similarly, 30.0–46.7% of swine cell clones containing the human CIITA antisense RNA also failed to express DR molecules. However, the persistence of the DR repression on the cell lines is quite different. Transfection with mCIITA was persistent for at least 120 days, while with the CIITA antisense RNA, persistence existed for only 35–45 days. To explore the underlying mechanism, Raji cells were transfected with pUHD10-3-mCIITA, a mCIITA-containing, doxycycline-dependent plasmid. The intensity of DR repression is correlated quite well with the efficiencies of the mCIITA expression within the cells in a doxycycline dose-dependent manner. This implicates a competition between the mCIITA and its endogenous full-length counterpart. In addition, we were able to show that purified human CD4 T cells did not respond to the mCIITA-transfected PIECs in xenogeneic mixed lymphocyte endothelial reaction (MLER). The stimulating indices (SI) were only 1.0–1.5, compared with 15.2–18.2 for those transfected with empty vector or an initiation codon-depleted mCIITA that is dysfunctional for protein translation. The results we obtained, especially those for persistent suppression of class II genes, show promise for the possible development of mCIITA-transgenic swine for organ/tissue xenotransplantation.