Specificity of human cytotoxic responses to chemically modified autologous cells.

Human PBML can generate cytotoxic responses to autologous cells that have been chemically modified with TNP or DNP. The cytotoxic effectors have precise hapten specificity. The DNP-specific effectors recognize DNP in association with cell surface alloantigens, which appear to be at least partially associated with HLA-A and -B. The TNP-specific effectors recognize TNP in association with several classes of determinants--some of which are HLA-linked alloantigens that are incompletely associated with HLA-A and -B, while other determinants are widely shared among humans.