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Current influenza vaccines stimulate neutralising antibody to the haemagglutinin antigen but as there is antigenic drift in HA it is difficult to prepare a vaccine in advance against an emergent strain. A potential strategy is to induce CD8(+) and CD4(+) T cells that recognize epitopes within internal proteins that are less subject to antigenic drift. Augmenting humoral responses to HA with T cell responses to more conserved antigens may result in a more broadly protective vaccine. In this study, we evaluate the quality of influenza specific T cell responses in a clinical trial using MVA-NP+M1 vaccination followed by influenza virus challenge. In vaccinated volunteers, the expression of Granzyme A, Perforin and CD57 on influenza HLA A*02 M158-66 antigen specific cells was higher than non-vaccinated volunteers before and after challenge despite a similar frequency of antigen specific cells. BCL2 expression was lower in vaccinated volunteers. These data indicate that antigen specific T cells are a useful additional measure for use in human vaccination or immunization studies.

Original publication

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0062778

Type

Journal article

Journal

PLoS One

Publication Date

2013

Volume

8

Keywords

Adolescent, Adult, Antigens, Viral, CD57 Antigens, CD8-Positive T-Lymphocytes, Epitopes, T-Lymphocyte, Granzymes, HLA-A2 Antigen, Hemagglutinins, Humans, Influenza Vaccines, Influenza, Human, Middle Aged, Nucleoproteins, Orthomyxoviridae, Perforin, Recombinant Proteins, Vaccination, Vaccines, Synthetic, Viral Core Proteins, Viral Matrix Proteins, Viral Vaccines