Abstract
Despite the extensive efforts towards development of an effective HIV vaccine, major challenges surrounding vaccine design still exist. We have previously developed a unique multivalent HIV-1 candidate vaccine representing hypervariable Gp120 and Gag regions. This candidate vaccine was able to induce a broad cell-mediated immune response in HLA-A2.1 mice and non-human primates against HIV-1 subtypes A-F. Herein, the reactivity of each hypervariable peptide mixture within our candidate peptide vaccine was further characterized to optimize the final vaccine formulation for the future clinical studies. The binding of each hypervariable region to sera from HIV-infected individuals demonstrated a strong reactivity between the antibodies and hypervariable regions. In addition, 15 groups of mice were immunized with adjuvant alone or each individual peptide mixture (lipidated or non-lipidated) to evaluate the ability of each variable region to induce humoral and cellular immune responses against HIV-1. A reactive HIV-1 specific immune response was detected among the immunized groups; however, mice receiving the Gag hypervariable regions demonstrated the highest frequency of cell-mediated immune responses.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 5950-5958 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | Vaccine |
Volume | 29 |
Issue number | 35 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Aug 11 2011 |
Keywords
- Gag
- Gp120
- HIV
- Peptides
- Vaccine
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Immunology and Microbiology(all)
- Infectious Diseases
- Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
- veterinary(all)
- Molecular Medicine