Saporin-conjugated tetramers identify efficacious anti-HIV CD8+ T-cell specificities

• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0184496
• Publication Date: 2017-10-11T17:37:57Z
• Authors: Ellen M. Leitman; Christine D. Palmer; Søren Buus; Fabian Chen; Lynn Riddell; Stuart Sims; Paul Klenerman; Asier Sáez-Cirión; Bruce D. Walker; Paul R. Hess; Marcus Altfeld; Philippa C. Matthews; Philip J. R. Goulder
• Keywords: CTL*; Saporin; Ex vivo

Antigen-specific T-cells are highly variable, spanning potent antiviral efficacy and damaging auto-reactivity. In virus infections, identifying the most efficacious responses is critical to vaccine design. However, current methods depend on indirect measures or ex vivo expanded CTL clones. We here describe a novel application of cytotoxic saporin-conjugated tetramers kill antigen-specific without significant off-target effects. The relative distinct CD8+ T-cell specificity can be directly assessed via depletion. utility these reagents demonstrated in effective preventing HIV progression HIV-infected HLA-B*27-positive immune controllers.