Hospital Clinic-HIVACAT; IDIBAPS; University of Barcelona; Barcelona, Spain.
Hum Vaccin Immunother. 2013 Nov;9(11):2445-52. doi: 10.4161/hv.25876. Epub 2013 Aug 2.
Dendritic cells have a central role in HIV infection. On one hand, they are essential to induce strong HIV-specific CD4⁺ helper T-cell responses that are crucial to achieve a sustained and effective HIV-specific CD8⁺ cytotoxic T-lymphocyte able to control HIV replication. On the other hand, DCs contribute to virus dissemination and HIV itself could avoid a correct antigen presentation. As the efficacy of immune therapy and therapeutic vaccines against HIV infection has been modest in the best of cases, it has been hypothesized that ex vivo generated DC therapeutic vaccines aimed to induce effective specific HIV immune responses might overcome some of these problems. In fact, DC-based vaccine clinical trials have yielded the best results in this field. However, despite these encouraging results, functional cure has not been reached with this strategy in any patient. In this Commentary, we discuss new approaches to improve the efficacy and feasibility of this type of therapeutic vaccine.
树突状细胞在 HIV 感染中具有核心作用。一方面，它们对于诱导强烈的 HIV 特异性 CD4⁺辅助 T 细胞应答至关重要，而这种应答对于实现持续有效的 HIV 特异性 CD8⁺细胞毒性 T 淋巴细胞，从而控制 HIV 复制是至关重要的。另一方面，树突状细胞有助于病毒的传播，而 HIV 本身也可以逃避正确的抗原呈递。由于针对 HIV 感染的免疫疗法和治疗性疫苗的疗效在最好的情况下也只是适度的，因此有人假设，旨在诱导有效特异性 HIV 免疫应答的体外生成的树突状细胞治疗性疫苗可能会克服其中的一些问题。事实上，基于树突状细胞的疫苗临床试验在该领域取得了最佳的结果。然而，尽管取得了这些令人鼓舞的结果，但这种策略在任何患者中都没有达到功能性治愈。在这篇评论中，我们讨论了改进这种治疗性疫苗的疗效和可行性的新方法。
