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1: Med Immunol. 2006 May 18;5:1.Click here to read Click here to read Links
Comment in:
Med Immunol. 2006;5:2.

Elicitation from virus-naive individuals of cytotoxic T lymphocytes directed against conserved HIV-1 epitopes.

Reche PA, Keskin DB, Hussey RE, Ancuta P, Gabuzda D, Reinherz EL.

Laboratory of Immunobiology and Department of Medical Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, 44 Binney Street, Boston, MA 02115, USA. reche@research.dfci.harvard.edu

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 IFNgamma producing cells and mount anti-HIV-1 cytolytic activity. This disparity suggests a vaccine design paradigm shift from infected to normal subjects.

PMID: 16674822 [PubMed]

PMCID: PMC1559620

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