Use of T cell epitopes for vaccine development.
T lymphocytes play a major role in the recognition and subsequent elimination of tumors and intracellular pathogens. Induction of epitope-specific T cell responses can help in the clearance of diseases for which no conventional vaccines exist. However, the lack of simple methods to identify relevant T cell epitopes, the high mutation rate of many pathogens, and HLA polymorphism have made the development of efficient T cell epitope-based, or "epitope-driven" vaccines difficult to achieve. Our research over the past several years has applied bioinformatics tools in conjunction with T cell assays to identify naturally processed putative T cell epitopes from several pathogens. This strategy will accelerate the development of new generation T cell epitope-based vaccines against various pathogens including viruses such as HIV and WNV, bacteria such as M.tb., and parasites such as plasmodium. This chapter will review the use of a bioinformatics-based approach to identify putative T cell epitopes. It will summarize the current state of knowledge regarding T cell-epitope-based vaccines and discuss several ways to improve their efficacy.
Sbai
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TB/HIV Research Lab., Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA. Hakima_Sbai@Brown.edu
Mehta
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DeGroot
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D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D019295:Computational Biology; D018984:Epitopes, T-Lymphocyte / Q000276:immunology*; D005822:Genetic Vectors; D015497:HIV-1 / Q000276:immunology; D006801:Humans; D009169:Mycobacterium tuberculosis / Q000235:genetics; D012486:Salmonella typhimurium / Q000235:genetics; D014612:Vaccines / Q000276:immunology*; D019444:Vaccines, DNA / Q000276:immunology; D014616:Vaccinia virus / Q000235:genetics; D014902:West Nile virus / Q000276:immunology
D018984:Epitopes, T-Lymphocyte; D014612:Vaccines; D019444:Vaccines, DNA