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Degeneracy and Repertoire of the Human HIV-1 Gag p17_77–85 CTL Response¹

June Kan-Mitchell^2,*, Melissa Bajcz^*, Keri L. Schaubert^*, David A. Price, Jason M. Brenchley, Tedi E. Asher, Daniel C. Douek, Hwee L. Ng, Otto O. Yang, Charles R. Rinaldo, Jr., Jose Miguel Benito^¶, Brygida Bisikirska^*, Ramakrishna Hegde^*, Franco M. Marincola^||, César Boggiano^#, Dianne Wilson^#, Judith Abrams^*, Sylvie E. Blondelle^# and Darcy B. Wilson^#,**

^* Karmanos Cancer Institute, Wayne State University School of Medicine, Detroit, MI 48201; Human Immunology Section, Vaccine Research Center, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892; Departments of Medicine and Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095; University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, Pittsburgh, PA 15261; ^¶ Department of Molecular Biology, Hospital Carlos III, Madrid, Spain; ^|| Immunogenetics Section, Department of Transfusion Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892; ^# Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies, San Diego, CA 92121; and ^** Mixture Sciences, Inc., San Diego, CA 92121

CD8⁺ CTL responses are important for the control of HIV-1 infection. The immunodominant HLA-A2-restricted Gag epitope, SLYNTVATL (SL9), is considered to be a poor immunogen because reactivity to it is rare in acute infection despite its paradoxical dominance in patients with chronic infection. We have previously reported SL9 to be a help-independent epitope in that it primes highly activated CTLs ex vivo from CD8⁺ T cells of seronegative healthy donors. These CTLs produce sufficient cytokines for extended autocrine proliferation but are sensitive to activation-induced cell death, which may cause them to be eliminated by a proinflammatory cytokine storm. Here we identified an agonist variant of the SL9 peptide, p41 (SLYNTVAAL), by screening a large synthetic combinatorial nonapeptide library with ex vivo-primed SL9-specific T cells. p41 invariably immunized SL9-cross-reactive CTLs from other donors ex vivo and H-2Db ₂m double knockout mice expressing a chimeric HLA-A*0201/H2-Db MHC class I molecule. Parallel human T cell cultures showed p41-specific CTLs to be less fastidious than SL9-CTLs in the level of costimulation required from APCs and the need for exogenous IL-2 to proliferate (help dependent). TCR sequencing revealed that the same clonotype can develop into either help-independent or help-dependent CTLs depending on the peptide used to activate the precursor CD8⁺ T cells. Although Ag-experienced SL9-T cells from two patients were also sensitive to IL-2-mediated cell death upon restimulation in vitro, the loss of SL9 T cells was minimized with p41. This study suggests that agonist sequences can replace aberrantly immunogenic native epitopes for the rational design of vaccines targeting HIV-1.

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				K. L. Schaubert, D. A. Price, N. Frahm, J. Li, H. L. Ng, A. Joseph, E. Paul, B. Majumder, V. Ayyavoo, E. Gostick, et al. Availability of a Diversely Avid CD8+ T Cell Repertoire Specific for the Subdominant HLA-A2-Restricted HIV-1 Gag p2419-27 Epitope J. Immunol., June 15, 2007; 178(12): 7756 - 7766. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]