Abstract
Epitopes in HIV polymerase were analyzed by peptide binding to human leukocyte antigen (HLA) A0201 molecules, the most frequent HLA class in the Caucasian population. We found that HIV-1 protease peptides representing both the wild type and anticipated drug resistance variants of the sequence bound well to HLA-A0201. We also found that wild type as well as a double mutated variant of the epitope was strongly immunogenic in HLA-A0201 transgenic mice, either as individual peptides or encoded in DNA multi-CTL epitope constructs. Immunological cross-reactivity between different variants of the peptide could be seen, suggesting that it may be possible to induce a broad immune response by immunizing with drug resistance-mutated epitopes. This may be of advantage for HIV-1 infected patients since such a response may cause a better outcome of an anti-retroviral drug therapy.
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