Discordant immunodominant patterns of HIV-specific CD8 T cells defined by cytokine production or proliferative capacity in HIV elite controllers (39.4)

Abstract

Abstract Several studies suggest that CTL proliferation is one of the functions specifically associated with elite control of HIV, but IFN-γ is generally used to define HIV epitope-specific CTL immunodominance. We performed multi-dimensional intra-donor analysis of HIV CTL-specific cytokine production and proliferation against panels of HLA-matched optimal epitopes. 9 elite controllers (EC) and 8 subjects with progressive infection (CP) were studied. Our analysis revealed two main immunodominance patterns defined by either predominant IFN-γ production or proliferative capacity with very different hierarchies of responses. In the EC, 40% of epitope-specific CTL that produced IFN-γ after 6 h stimulation did not proliferate whereas 47% of CTL with strong proliferative capacity did not produce IFN-γ after 6h stimulation. The contrasting patterns of immunodominance were associated with different phenotypes of memory and exhaustion markers. HIV CP usually had little HIV-specific proliferative capacity as compared to EC (21% vs 7% of tested epitopes, p=0.009). Our data indicate that immunodominance patterns of HIV-specific CD8 T cell responses differ markedly based on an IFN-γ read out assay compared to functional proliferation. The intra-individual heterogeneity of HIV-specific CTL responses shows that not all epitope specific responses are functionally similar. Assessing CTL functions at the single epitope level can facilitate identification of features critical for antiviral function.