Autophagy is an intracellular degradation system that plays an important role in T-cell survival. However, the precise mechanism linking autophagy and cell death in primary human T cells is unclear because methods for monitoring autophagy in small numbers of primary human cells remain controversial. We established a novel method for assessing autophagy in activated human T cells using a retroviral GFP-LC3 expression system. We found that autophagy was induced after TCR stimulation and that autophagydefective naïve CD4 + T cells were susceptible to apoptosis through the intrinsic apoptotic
pathway. Enhanced apoptosis of autophagy-defective T cells resulted from accumulation of ROS due to impaired mitophagy. We also demonstrated that effector memory CD4+ T cells had lower autophagic activity than naïve CD4 + T cells, which contributed to their enhanced apoptosis due to increased ROS. Moreover, blocking autophagy increased intracellular mitochondrial volume and ROS levels in activated T cells. These results suggest a protective role of autophagy as an anti-oxidant system in activated human T cells. The combination of an autophagy blocker and a mitochondrial electron transport chain inhibitor has a synergistic effect on T-cell death, which could be a novel strategy for induction of T-cell apoptosis.Keywords: Apoptosis r Autophagy r Human T cell r Mitophagy r Reactive oxygen speciesAdditional supporting information may be found in the online version of this article at the publisher's web-site
IntroductionMacroautophagy (hereafter referred to as autophagy) is an evolutionally conserved intracellular degradation system. During autophagy, a small vesicle known as a sequestering phagophore or an isolation membrane engulfs cytoplasmic materials and organelles to form a double membrane structure, an autophagosome. The autophagosome subsequently fuses with a lysoCorrespondence: Dr. Hiroshi Fujii e-mail: hfujii@med.tohoku.ac.jp some to become an autolysosome, leading to degradation of the enclosed materials for recycling or energy production [1]. Autophagy is activated in response to nutrient starvation and various cellular stresses such as hypoxia, ER stress, and pharmacological treatment. Basal levels of autophagy under nutrientsufficient conditions act as a quality control mechanism to degrade damaged organelles or aggregated proteins [2]. Autophagy is considered to be involved in a wide range of normal physiological processes, whereas its dysregulation may contribute to the pathogenesis of numerous diseases such as neurodegeneration, Crohn's disease, infections, and cancers [3].C 2014 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim www.eji-journal.eu Eur. J. Immunol. 2014. 44: 2508-2520 New technology
2509Autophagy involves a set of gene products, termed Atg proteins [2]. Unc-51-like kinase 1 (ULK1), which is a mammalian homolog of Atg1, initiates autophagosome formation. Subsequently, Atg9 and the Atg12-Atg5-Atg16 complex provide membranes required for elongation, after which Atg8 is incorporated into autophagosomes [4]. ULK...