Allosteric Inhibition of the T Cell Receptor by a Designed Membrane Ligand

The T cell receptor (TCR) is a complex molecular machine that directs the activation of T cells, allowing the immune system to fight pathogens and cancer cells. Despite decades of investigation, the molecular mechanism of TCR activation is still controversial. One of the leading activation hypotheses is the allosteric model. This model posits that binding of pMHC at the extracellular domain triggers a dynamic change in the transmembrane (TM) domain of the TCR subunits, which leads to signaling at the cytoplasmic side. We sought to test this hypothesis by creating a TM ligand for TCR. Previously we described a method to create a soluble peptide capable of inserting into membranes and bind to the TM domain of the receptor tyrosine kinase EphA2 (Alves et al., eLife 2018). Here we show that the approach is generalizable to complex membrane receptors, by designing a membrane ligand for TCR. We observed that the designed peptide caused a reduction of Lck phosphorylation of TCR at the CD3ζ subunit. As a result, in the presence of this Peptide Inhibitor of TCR (PITCR), the proximal signaling cascade downstream of TCR activation was significantly dampened in T cells. Co-localization and co-immunoprecipitation results in DIBMA native nanodiscs confirmed that PITCR was able to bind to the TCR. We propose that PITCR binds into a crevice present between the TM helices of the CD3ζ and CD3ε(δ) subunits. Our results additionally indicate that PITCR disrupts the allosteric changes in the compactness of the TM bundle that occur upon TCR activation, lending support to the allosteric TCR activation model. The TCR inhibition achieved by PITCR might be useful to treat inflammatory and autoimmune diseases and to prevent organ transplant rejection, as in these conditions aberrant activation of TCR contributes to disease.