Vaccine. 2010 Aug 23; 28(37):6052-7.

PubMed ID: 20619380

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

Almeida CA, Roberts SG, Laird R, McKinnon E, Ahmad I, Keane NM, Chopra A, Kadie C, Heckerman D, Mallal S, John M

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-gamma 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.