The proliferation of PBMCs from alloimmune donors against RhD peptides is mediated by T cells.

Shown are the proliferative responses of purified peripheral blood T cells from a representative alloimmune donor (22) against the smaller panel of peptides spanning the RhD protein. The apparent discrepancy with the sequences that stimulated PBMCs from this donor (Table 2) was due to differences in the peptide panels screened and the greater responsiveness of the purified T cells. Thus, the T cells were not tested against 2 (17 and 28) of the 3 peptides (2, 17, and 28) that elicited proliferation of PBMCs from the same donor, and PBMCs did respond to 4 of the peptides (5, 8, 12, and 47) that stimulated the T cells, but the response was not strong enough to represent a significant difference.