Increased CTL epitope variant cross-recognition and functional avidity are associated with HCV clear

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J Virol. 2008 Jan 9 [Epub ahead of print]

Increased CTL epitope variant cross-recognition and functional avidity are

associated with HCV clearance.

Yerly D, Heckerman D, TM, Chisholm JV 3rd, Faircloth K, Linde CH, Frahm N,

Timm J, Pichler WJ, Cerny A, Brander C.

University of Bern, Clinic for Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology/Allergology,

CH-3010 Bern, Switzerland; Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical

School, Partners AIDS Research Center, Boston, MA, USA; Microsoft Research,

Redmond, WA 98052, USA; University Hospital Essen, Institute for Virology,

Essen, Germany, Ospedale Regionale di Lugano, Department of Medicine, CH-6903

Lugano, Switzerland.

Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) clearance has been associated with reduced viral

evolution in targeted CTL epitopes, suggesting that HCV clearers may mount CTL

responses with a superior ability to recognize epitope variants and prevent

viral immune escape. Here, 40 HCV-infected subjects were tested with 406 10mer

peptides covering the vast majority of the sequence diversity spanning a 197

residues region of the NS3 protein. HCV clearers mounted significantly broader

CTL responses of higher functional avidity and with wider variant

cross-recognition capacity than non-clearers. These observations have important

implications for vaccine approaches that may need to induce high avidity

responses in-vivo.

PMID: 18184704 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

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