The Immunodominant CD8 T Cell Response to the Human Cytomegalovirus Tegument Phosphoprotein pp65495–503 Epitope Critically Depends on CD4 T Cell Help in Vaccinated HLA-A*0201 Transgenic Mice

Abstract

Immunodominance hierarchies operating in immune responses to viral Ags limit the diversity of the elicited CD8 T cell responses. We evaluated in I-Ab+/A2-HHD-II and HLA-DR1+/A2-DR1 mice the HLA-A*0201–restricted, multispecific CD8 T cell responses to the human CMV tegument phosphoprotein pp65 (pp65) Ag. Vaccination of mice with pp65-encoding DNA elicited high IFN-γ+ CD8 T cell frequencies to the pp65495–503/(e6) epitope and low responses to the pp65320–328/(e3) and pp65522–530/(e8) epitopes. Abrogation of the e6-specific immunity efficiently enhanced e3- and e8-specific T cell responses by a pp65Δ501–503 DNA vaccine. The immunodominant e6-specific (but not the e3- and e8-specific) CD8 T cell response critically depends on CD4 T cell help. Injection of monospecific DNA- or peptide-based vaccines encoding the e3 or e8 (but not the e6) epitope into mice elicited CD8 T cells. Codelivering the antigenic peptides with different heterologous CD4 T cell helper epitopes enhanced e6-specific (but not e3- or e8-specific) CD8 T cell responses. Similarly, homologous CD4 T cell help, located within an overlapping (nested) pp65487–503 domain, facilitated induction of e6-specific CD8 T cell responses by peptide-based vaccination. The position of the e6 epitope within this nested domain is not critical to induce the immunodominant, e6-specific CD8 T cell response to the pp65 Ag. Distant CD4 T cell epitope(s) can thus provide efficient help for establishing pp65-e6 immunodominance in vaccinated mice. These results have practical implications for the design of new T cell-stimulating vaccines.