IMR Press / FBL / Volume 7 / Issue 4 / DOI: 10.2741/A730

Frontiers in Bioscience-Landmark (FBL) is published by IMR Press from Volume 26 Issue 5 (2021). Previous articles were published by another publisher on a subscription basis, and they are hosted by IMR Press on imrpress.com as a courtesy and upon agreement with Frontiers in Bioscience.

Article
T-lymphocyte epitope identification and their use in vaccine development for HIV-1
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1 Epimmune Inc., 5820 Nancy Ridge Drive, San Diego, CA 92121, USA. mnewman@epimmune.com
Front. Biosci. (Landmark Ed) 2002, 7(4), 1503–1515; https://doi.org/10.2741/A730
Published: 1 June 2002
Abstract

Cellular immune responses mediated by CD8+ cytotoxic T-lymphocytes (CTL) and CD4+ helper T-lymphocytes (HTL) are needed to effectively control and clear many viral pathogens, including HIV-1. Thus, vaccines for HIV-1 capable of inducing CTL and HTL responses are now the focus of multiple academic and industry-based research and development programs. The use of defined, minimal CTL and HTL epitopes in vaccines has several potential advantages. Firstly, it is possible to use epitopes that are conserved thus targeting the majority of viral variants within a given clade or across clades. Secondly, epitopes from multiple viral structural or accessory gene products can be included in vaccines, which supports the induction cellular immune responses with significant breadth. Finally, dominance relationships between epitopes can be altered to increase immune recognition of subdominant epitopes. HTL and CTL epitopes from HIV-1 have recently been identified and characterized in numbers that are large enough to support their use in experimental vaccines. Initial studies with prototype DNA vaccines encoding epitopes indicate the need to include intracellular targeting sequences, to direct the encoded gene products to different cellular compartments, and amino acid spacer sequences between epitopes to optimize the processing, and subsequent presentation, of individual epitopes. Vaccines composed of CTL or HTL epitopes are now being developed for clinical testing.

Keywords
HIV-1
epitope vaccine
Cytotoxic Tlymphocyte
CTL
Hhelper T-lymphocyte
HTL
Cellular immunity
Review
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