Cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL) protect against viruses including HIV-1. To avoid viral escape mutants that thwart immunity, we chose 25 CTL epitopes defined in the context of natural infection with functional and/ or structural constraints that maintain sequence conservation. By combining HLA binding predictions with knowledge concerning HLA allele frequencies, a metric estimating population protection coverage (PPC) was computed and epitope pools assembled. Strikingly, only a minority of immunocompetent HIV-1 infected individuals responds to pools with PPC >95%. In contrast, virus-naive individuals uniformly expand IFγ producing cells and mount anti-HIV-1 cytolytic activity. This disparity suggests a vaccine design paradigm shift from infected to normal subjects. © 2006 Reche et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.
CITATION STYLE
Reche, P. A., Keskin, D. B., Hussey, R. E., Ancuta, P., Gabuzda, D., & Reinherz, E. L. (2006). Elicitation from virus-naive individuals of cytotoxic T lymphocytes directed against conserved HIV-1 epitopes. Medical Immunology, 5. https://doi.org/10.1186/1476-9433-5-1
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