Exploiting knowledge of immune selection in HIV-1 to detect HIV-specific CD8 T-cell responses

Almeida, C.M., Roberts, S.G., Laird, R., McKinnon, E., Ahmad, I., Keane, N.M., Chopra, A., Kadie, C., Heckerman, D., Mallal, S. and John, M. (2010) Exploiting knowledge of immune selection in HIV-1 to detect HIV-specific CD8 T-cell responses. Vaccine, 28 (37). pp. 6052-6057.

Abstract

Since HLA-restricted cytotoxic T-cell responses select specific polymorphisms in HIV-1 sequences and HLA diversity is relatively static in human populations, we investigated the use of peptide epitopes based on sites of HLA-associated adaptation in HIV-1 sequences to stimulate and detect T-cell responses ex vivo. These "HLA-optimised" peptides captured more HIV-1 Nef-specific responses compared with overlapping peptides of a single consensus sequence, in interferon-γ enzyme linked immunospot assays. Sites of immune selection can reveal more immunogenic epitopes in HLA-diverse populations and offer insights into the nature of HLA-epitope targeting, which could be applied in vaccine design.