Analysis of CD8+ T cell quality in Hepatitis C using novel MHC peptide tetramers.

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Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infects nearly 200 million people worldwide. Once infected the body mounts an immune response, which is variably successful. Sometimes the immune response can clear the virus, however in most cases it fails to do so and the virus can then go on to cause severe liver damage. The quality of the immune response may determine the outcome of the infection. One aspect of the quality is how sensitive the key immune cells (T cells) are to low amounts of virus - the more sensitive cells might be more efficient in controlling the virus. We have developed new methods for measuring the quality of T cells in different people, including healthy volunteers receiving an experimental vaccine against HCV. We aim to create a panel of new tetramers, specially designed to identify the high and low quality cells in different donors, and look at how these correlate with the outcome of infection, or change over time. In doing this we hope to be able to better understand why some people clear the virus and others do not, and also to design better vaccines or immune treatments in the future.