Influence of HIV protein kinetics on anti-HIV effects in HIV-specific cellular immune response

在HIV感染过程中，针对许多靶点(表位)诱导出强大而广泛的HIV特异性CTL。在这项研究中，我们证明了一种机制，即在一个氨基酸发生变化后，产生从头开始的CTL表位，这可能是CTL压力导致的重叠表位。这种发生在宿主免疫中的新的“表位转换”机制可能有助于理解细胞免疫和CTL疫苗的开发。

Strong and broad HIV-specific CTLs are induced against numerous targets (epitopes) during HIV infection. In this study, we demonstrates a mechanism, which generates de novo CTL epitope after one amino acid change that might result from the CTL pressure to the overlapping epitope. This novel “epitope switching” mechanism that occurs in host immunity might help the understanding of cellular immunity and CTL vaccine development.