Abstract
The development of prophylactic vaccines against retroviral diseases has been impeded by the lack of obvious immune correlates for protection. Cytotoxic T-lymphocyte (CTL), CD4-lymphocyteS, chemokine and/or antibody responses have all been associated with protection against HIV and AIDS; however, effective and safe vaccination strategies remain elusive. Here we show that vaccination with a minimal ovine CTL peptide epitope identified within gp51 of the retrovirus bovine leukemia virus (BLV), consistently induced peptide-specific CTLs. Only sheep whose CTLs were also capable of recognizing retrovirus-infected cells were fully protected when challenged with BLV. This retrovirus displays limited sequence variation; thus, in the relative absence of confounding CTL escape variants, virus-specific CTLs targeting a single epitope were able to prevent the establishment of a latent retroviral infection.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1193-6 |
Number of pages | 4 |
Journal | Nature Medicine |
Volume | 4 |
Issue number | 10 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Oct 1998 |
Keywords
- Animals
- Deltaretrovirus Infections
- Leukemia Virus, Bovine
- Leukemia, Lymphocytic, Chronic, B-Cell
- Sheep
- Sheep Diseases
- T-Lymphocytes, Cytotoxic
- Viral Envelope Proteins
- Viral Vaccines
- Virus Latency