Abstract
CD4+ T cells are central to the induction and maintenance of CD8+ T cell and antibody-producing B cell responses, and the latter are essential for the protection against disease in subjects with HIV infection. How to elicit HIV-specific CD4+ T cell responses in a given population using vaccines is one of the major areas of current HIV vaccine research. To design vaccine that targets specifically Chinese, we assembled a database that is comprised of sequences from 821 Chinese HIV isolates and 46 human leukocyte antigen (HLA) DR alleles identified in Chinese population. We then predicted 20 potential HIV epitopes using bioinformatics approaches. The combination of these 20 epitopes has a theoretical coverage of 98.1% of the population for both the prevalent HIV genotypes and also Chinese HLA-DR types. We suggest that testing this vaccine experimentally will facilitate the development of a CD4+ T cell vaccine especially catered for Chinese.
Highlights
Over 30 million people have died from HIV/AIDS related illnesses since HIV was discovered in the 1980s
821 HIV whole genome sequences of Chinese population were retrieved from HIV Database [27], and the distribution of 46 human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-DR alleles (Table 1) was extracted from The Allele Frequency Net Database (AFND) [28]
Seven existing methods available in Immune Epitope Database (IEDB) [29] for MHC class II binding were used to predict HIV epitopes based on binding affinity between HLA DR types and HIV epitopes
Summary
Over 30 million people have died from HIV/AIDS related illnesses since HIV was discovered in the 1980s. In China, HIV infection is a great concern, especially in southern part of China, for example, Yunnan, Sichuan, Guangxi, and Xinjiang Provinces, where a large number of infected people are drug users. In the regions of Henan, Hubei Provinces where people were infected through illicit blood collection, the rate of infection reached up to 60% of blood donors [2]. Active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), a combination of three or more antiretroviral drugs, is routinely used to treat individuals with HIV infection [3]. It significantly extends the lifespan and improves the quality of life of people infected with HIV but cannot eradicate the virus [4].
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