Journal of Virology, December 2006, p. 11991-11997, Vol. 80, No. 24
0022-538X/06/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/JVI.01348-06
Copyright © 2006, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Modulation of DNA Vaccine-Elicited CD8+ T-Lymphocyte Epitope Immunodominance Hierarchies
Jinyan Liu,
Bonnie A. Ewald,
Diana M. Lynch,
Anjali Nanda,
Shawn M. Sumida, and
Dan H. Barouch*
Division of Viral Pathogenesis, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts
Received 26 June 2006/
Accepted 20 September 2006
Generating broad cellular immune responses against a diversity of viral epitopes is a major goal of current vaccine strategies for human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) and other pathogens. Virus-specific CD8+ T-lymphocyte responses, however, are often highly focused on a very limited number of immunodominant epitopes. For an HIV-1 vaccine, the breadth of CD8+ T-lymphocyte responses may prove to be critical as a result of the need to cover a wide diversity of viral isolates in the population and to limit viral escape from dominant epitope-specific T lymphocytes. Here we show that epitope modification strategies can alter CD8+ T-lymphocyte epitope immunodominance hierarchies elicited by a DNA vaccine in mice. Mice immunized with a DNA vaccine expressing simian immunodeficiency virus Gag lacking the dominant Db-restricted AL11 epitope generated a marked and durable augmentation of responses specific for the subdominant Db-restricted KV9 epitope. Moreover, anatomic separation strategies and heterologous prime-boost regimens generated codominant responses against both epitopes. These data demonstrate that dominant epitopes can dramatically suppress the immunogenicity of subdominant epitopes in the context of gene-based vaccines and that epitope modification strategies can be utilized to enhance responses to subdominant epitopes.
* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Research East Room 213, Division of Viral Pathogenesis, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, 330 Brookline Avenue, Boston, MA 02215. Phone: (617) 667-4434. Fax: (617) 667-8210. E-mail: dbarouch{at}bidmc.harvard.edu.
Published ahead of print on 27 September 2006.
Journal of Virology, December 2006, p. 11991-11997, Vol. 80, No. 24
0022-538X/06/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/JVI.01348-06
Copyright © 2006, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
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