Abstract
Methods Using MHC-I associated HIV-1 polymorphisms in gag, pol and nef sequences from 730 South Africans with chronic infection; over 957 potential ARF epitopes were predicted. Of these, 25 potential cryptic epitopes (CE) were selected for testing using the standard overnight IFNγ ELISpot assay in PBMC from 61 HIV clade B infected US patients and 14 seronegative controls. In a subset of HIV infected patients: chronic (N = 6) and acute (N = 9), the polyfunctionality of the CE responses was measured using an ICS assay. CTL clones were derived for three antisense cryptic pol epitopes by limiting dilution cloning. The CD8 clones were characterized using 51Cr release and ICS assay.
Highlights
Open AccessCryptic CTL epitopes derived from antisense transcription are frequently recognized in HIV-1 infection
Of the six potential reading frames encoded by a gene, cryptic epitopes are derived from the translation of any of the five alternate reading frames (ARF) including two sense and three antisense reading frames
The CD8 clones were characterized using 51Cr release and ICS assay. This data demonstrates the existence of a novel repertoire of HIV-1 specific CTL that are common in HIV-1 infection
Summary
Cryptic CTL epitopes derived from antisense transcription are frequently recognized in HIV-1 infection. Address: 1Medicine, Infectious Diseases, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA, 2Microsoft Research, Seattle, WA, USA and 3Dept of Pediatrics, Oxford, UK. Published: 22 October 2009 Retrovirology 2009, 6(Suppl 3):P233 doi:10.1186/1742-4690-6-S3-P233. AIDS Vaccine 2009 Anna Laura Ross Meeting abstracts – A single PDF containing all abstracts in this Supplement is available here. http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1471-2105-10-S12-info.pdf
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