AUTHOR=Minigo Gabriela , Flanagan Katie L. , Slattery Robyn M. , Plebanski Magdalena TITLE=Vaccination with Altered Peptide Ligands of a Plasmodium berghei Circumsporozoite Protein CD8 T-Cell Epitope: A Model to Generate T Cells Resistant to Immune Interference by Polymorphic Epitopes JOURNAL=Frontiers in Immunology VOLUME=8 YEAR=2017 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/immunology/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2017.00115 DOI=10.3389/fimmu.2017.00115 ISSN=1664-3224 ABSTRACT=

Many pathogens, including the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum, display high levels of polymorphism within T-cell epitope regions of proteins associated with protective immunity. The T-cell epitope variants are often non-cross-reactive. Herein, we show in a murine model, which modifies a protective CD8 T-cell epitope from the circumsporozoite protein (CS) of Plasmodium berghei (SYIPSAEKI), that simultaneous or sequential co-stimulation with two of its putative similarly non-cross-reactive altered peptide ligand (APL) epitopes (SYIPSAEDI or SYIPSAEAI) has radically different effects on immunity. Hence, co-immunization or sequential stimulation in vivo of SYIPSAEKI with its APL antagonist SYIPSAEDI decreases immunity to both epitopes. By contrast, co-immunization with SYIPSAEAI has no apparent initial effect, but it renders the immune response to SYIPSAEKI resistant to being turned off by subsequent immunization with SYIPSAEDI. These results suggest a novel strategy for vaccines that target polymorphic epitopes potentially capable of mutual immune interference in the field, by initiating an immune response by co-immunization with the desired index epitope, together with a carefully selected “potentiator” APL peptide.