NK-cell associated receptors expression in EBV-positive gamma-delta T cell lines.

The contribution of chronic antigen stimulation to the occurrence of lymphoproliferative disorder (LPD) with the gamma-delta T-cell lineage is unclear, despite the fact that Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) positive T-cell LPD is derived from antigen-stimulated cytotoxic T-cells. Given the possible association of antigen stimulation with the development of cytotoxic T-cell LPD, we compared gene expression patterns in Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)-positive gamma-delta T-cell lines derived from patients with nasal T-cell lymphoma and chronic active EBV infection and those in gamma-delta T-cells from healthy volunteers. Three EBV-positive gamma-delta T-cells lines, SNT cells (SNT-8, SNT-13 and SNT-15), were used in this study. SNT-8 was established from patients with nasal T-cell lymphoma and SNT-13, -15 were established from patients with chronic active EBV infection (Zhang Y, et al., Br J Cancer 94:599-608, 2006). All the SNT cells exhibits common rearrangement of Vgamma9-JgammaP and Jdelta3 genes. The gamma-delta T-cells obtained from healthy volunteers were expanded ex vivo by 1 microM of zoledronate (ZOL) plus IL-2 for 14 days incubation. We compared gene expression profiling in 3 EBV-positive positive gamma-delta T-cells lines with those in gamma-delta T cells obtaied from a healthy volunteer. Global gene expression was analyzed using the Affymetrix Human Genome U133 2.0 Plus GeneChip Set. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was done using GeneSifter® (VizXLabs). Values of P<0.05 were considered to be a statistically significant difference.