Reguzova Alena Y, Karpenko Larisa I, Mechetina Ludmila V, Belyakov Igor M
State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology "Vector", Koltsovo, Novosibirsk region, 630559, Russia.
Expert Rev Vaccines. 2015 Jan;14(1):69-84. doi: 10.1586/14760584.2015.962520. Epub 2014 Nov 5.
The use of MHC multimers allows precise and direct detecting and analyzing of antigen-specific T-cell populations and provides new opportunities to characterize T-cell responses in humans and animals. MHC-multimers enable us to enumerate specific T-cells targeting to viral, tumor and vaccine antigens with exceptional sensitivity and specificity. In the field of HIV/SIV immunology, this technique provides valuable information about the frequencies of HIV- and SIV-specific CD8(+) cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) in different tissues and sites of infection, AIDS progression, and pathogenesis. Peptide-MHC multimer technology remains a very sensitive tool in detecting virus-specific T -cells for evaluation of the immunogenicity of vaccines against HIV-1 in preclinical trials. Moreover, it helps to understand how immune responses are formed following vaccination in the dynamics from priming point until T-cell memory is matured. Here we review a diversity of peptide-MHC class I multimer applications for fundamental immunological studies in different aspects of HIV/SIV infection and vaccine development.
MHC多聚体的应用能够精确且直接地检测和分析抗原特异性T细胞群体，并为表征人类和动物的T细胞反应提供了新的机会。MHC多聚体使我们能够以极高的灵敏度和特异性枚举针对病毒、肿瘤和疫苗抗原的特异性T细胞。在HIV/SIV免疫学领域，这项技术提供了有关不同组织和感染部位中HIV和SIV特异性CD8(+)细胞毒性T淋巴细胞（CTL）的频率、艾滋病进展及发病机制的有价值信息。肽-MHC多聚体技术在检测病毒特异性T细胞以评估临床前试验中针对HIV-1疫苗的免疫原性方面仍然是一种非常灵敏的工具。此外，它有助于理解从启动点到T细胞记忆成熟的动态过程中接种疫苗后免疫反应是如何形成的。在此，我们综述了肽-MHC I类多聚体在HIV/SIV感染和疫苗开发不同方面的基础免疫学研究中的多种应用。
