HLA footprinting reveals a novel protective CD8 + T cell response in Hepatitis C virus infection

Abstract

vectors have generated great scientific interest in recent years and appear to be superior viral vectors with great potential in vaccine regimes. Their potential use in humans, however, is limited by natural anti-vector immunity to human adenoviruses, but this problem could be largely circumvented by the use of simian adenoviral vaccine vectors. Recent clinical trials have suggested that the simian adenoviral vector AdCh63 is a promising clinical candidate. We have developed vectors (of human and simian origin) and MVA encoding a novel construct based on P. falciparum MSP-1 and have undertaken comparative immunogenicity studies in mice. The antigen, termed ‘PfM128, is based on the five highly conserved blocks from P. falciparum MSP-1, plus both dimorphic alleles of the 42 kDa region. We have used these vectors to map novel murine Tcell epitopes within PfMSP-1. We compare antibody titres and polyfunctional T cell responses when simian adenoviral vector AdCh63 is used to replace AdHu5 in a heterologous prime-boost regime. These data suggest that simian adenoviral vectors have great potential for use in future blood-stage malaria vaccination regimes in humans.