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AssigneeThe Government of the United States of America as represented by the Secretary of the Department of
InventorsJay A. Berzofsky, Takahiro Okazaki
Estimating the term…
Virus-specific CD4+T cell help and CD8+ cytotoxic T cell responses are critical for the maintenance of effective immunity in chronic viral infections. The importance of the CD4+T cells has been documented in HIV infection. A T1-specific CD4+T cell line from a healthy volunteer immunized with a canarypox vector expressing gp120 has been developed. The cell line was restricted to DR13, which is common in the U.S. in both Caucasians and African-Americans and is one of the major haplotypes in Africans. Amino acid substitutions in the T1 epitope were made to induce a stronger epitope-specific CD4+T cell response than the original epitope resulting in an improved CD4 epitope. A polypeptide comprising the enhanced CD4 epitope can be used as a component in compositions either alone or in combination with other adjuvants and other immunogenic compositions to induce a more effective immune response to HIV infection.
An isolated polypeptide comprising an enhanced T1 epitope, said enhanced T1 epitope comprising a peptide region corresponding to positions 428-443 of HIV IIIB gp160 protein (KQIINMWQEVGKAMYA, SEQ ID NO:
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A method for inducing an enhanced T1 epitope-specific immune response, the method comprising:
A method of determining the amino acid sequence of an enhanced T1 helper T cell epitope, the method comprising:
A method for inducing an enhanced T1 epitope-specific immune response in a human subject having an HLA-DR13 haplotype, the method comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.