HIV immune escape mutants.

Erika CASTRO

The lack of information regarding CD4 T helper specific responses and the dynamic of immune escape mutants, are indeed some of the important obstacles towards the development of an effective HIV vaccine.

In the attempt of better understanding the mechanisms leading to HIV immune escape mutants in the intra-host level, we are conducting a study to follow-up in vivo evolution of HIV CD8⁺ and CD4⁺ T cell responses and the emergence of epitope escape mutants to HIV-1. The study group consists of patients at different clinical phases of infection and with various therapy approaches.

The scope of the investigation includes HIV molecular characterization with HMA (Heteroduplex Mobility Assay) and nucleotide sequencing, HLA typing and kinetics of specific CD8⁺ CD4⁺ T cell responses to HIV peptides.

The breadth of the specific immune response to both consensus subtype B and autologous HIV-derived peptides will be assessed by multiparameter flow cytometry analysis and ELISPOT. In addition, key mutations involved in anti-retroviral drug resistance or affecting the overlapping site of the pol sequence – the key gene from drug resistance will be identified by amino acid alignments.

Reviewed presentation:

Castro E., Harari A., Cellerai C., Bart P.-A., Chave J.-P. and Pantaleo G. Cross-clade recognition of Gag-p24 GPSHKARVL epitope restricted by HLA-B7 in HIV-1 infection.
XVI International AIDS Conference. Toronto, Canada, 13-18 August 2006.

Poster and Oral abstract WEAA0205

Dernière modification le 04.10.2007 - Impressum - Informations juridiques