Wu Yandan, Ding Yan, Shen Chuanlai
Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Medical School of Southeast University, Nanjing 210009, China.
Vaccines (Basel). 2022 Feb 8;10(2):257. doi: 10.3390/vaccines10020257.
Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection remains a worldwide health problem and no eradicative therapy is currently available. Host T cell immune responses have crucial influences on the outcome of HBV infection, however the development of therapeutic vaccines, T cell therapies and the clinical evaluation of HBV-specific T cell responses are hampered markedly by the lack of validated T cell epitopes. This review presented a map of T cell epitopes functionally validated from HBV antigens during the past 33 years; the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) supertypes to present these epitopes, and the methods to screen and identify T cell epitopes. To the best of our knowledge, a total of 205 CD8 T cell epitopes and 79 CD4 T cell epitopes have been defined from HBV antigens by cellular functional experiments thus far, but most are restricted to several common HLA supertypes, such as HLA-A0201, A2402, B0702, DR04, and DR12 molecules. Therefore, the currently defined T cell epitope repertoire cannot cover the major populations with HLA diversity in an indicated geographic region. More researches are needed to dissect a more comprehensive map of T cell epitopes, which covers overall HBV proteome and global patients.
乙型肝炎病毒（HBV）感染仍然是一个全球性的健康问题，目前尚无根除性治疗方法。宿主T细胞免疫反应对HBV感染的结果具有关键影响，然而，由于缺乏经过验证的T细胞表位，治疗性疫苗、T细胞疗法的开发以及HBV特异性T细胞反应的临床评估受到了明显阻碍。本综述展示了过去33年中从HBV抗原中功能验证的T细胞表位图；呈递这些表位的人类白细胞抗原（HLA）超型，以及筛选和鉴定T细胞表位的方法。据我们所知，到目前为止，通过细胞功能实验已从HBV抗原中定义了总共205个CD8 T细胞表位和79个CD4 T细胞表位，但大多数局限于几种常见的HLA超型，如HLA-A0201、A2402、B0702、DR04和DR12分子。因此，目前定义的T细胞表位库无法覆盖指定地理区域中具有HLA多样性的主要人群。需要更多的研究来剖析更全面的T细胞表位图，该图涵盖整个HBV蛋白质组和全球患者。
