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Visualizing Antigen Specific CD4+ T Cells using MHC Class II Tetramers
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Epitope affinity for MHC class I determines helper requirement for CTL priming

A Franco1, D A Tilly, I Gramaglia

  • 1Division of Immunochemistry, La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology, San Diego, CA 92121, USA. alessandra_franco@liai.org

Nature Immunology
|March 15, 2001
PubMed

We show here that priming and memory generation of antigen-specific CD8+ cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL) does not require help if the immunogen binds major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I molecules with high affinity. This conclusion was based on the study of three chemically distinct optimal length CTL epitopes with high affinity for the restriction element Kb. In contrast, when two subdominant epitopes with intermediate MHC binding affinity were studied, either a class II MHC-restricted T helper cell epitope or administration of antibody to CD40 was required to obtain significant CTL priming. Depending on the epitope, one source of help was much more efficient than the other.

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