Int Conf AIDS 1990 Jun 20-23; 6:327 (abstract no. 1053) Detrick B, Bradac J, Schultz AM, Koff WC, Mathieson BL; Division of AIDS, NIAID, NIH, Bethesda, Md. USA
A highly efficacious HIV vaccine will almost certainly require multiple HIV viral components and/or strains to stimulate selected immune responses. One approach to this problem is to identify the sequence of amino acids and/or protein conformations which elicit immune responses that protect the host. Peptide epitope mapping techniques have been used to characterize humoral and cellular immunity generated to the env, gag, pol and regulatory proteins. Epitopes recognized by B cell/Ig are important for neutralization, ADCC and antibody dependent enhancement. Several of these epitopes map to the gp120 and gp41 regions. Since these epitopes are expressed on the viral surface and infected cell and appear to play a critical role in the process of infection, they are a major target for current vaccine strategies. A formidable challenge to this strategy is the high degree of genetic variation concentrated in an immunodominant loop of the gp120 which is the target for neutralizing antibodies and is strain specific. Several epitopes for cell mediated immunity have also been defined. For example, HIV-specific T cells have been described with activity directed against the gp120/env, p24/gag, p27/nef and reverse transcriptase/pol. In an effort to coordinate and disseminate information relative to vaccine development, the Vaccine Research & Development Branch of NIAID maintains surveillance of overall progress in these experiments. To this end information has been compiled and a defined map has been constructed. The information generated from epitope mapping provides us with a framework to define epitopes that will be useful in developing an effective vaccine.
Keywords: AEGIS, HIV-1, Epitopes, AIDS Vaccines, Epitope Mapping, RNA-Directed DNA Polymerase, Antibody-Dependent Cell Cytotoxicity, T-Lymphocytes, Peptide Mapping, Antibody-Dependent Enhancement, immunology, virology, ICA6
