AUTHOR=Toledo Nikki P. L. , Li Hongzhao , Omange Robert W. , Dacoba Tamara G. , Crecente-Campo Jose , Schalk Dane , Kashem Mohammad A. , Rakasz Eva , Schultz-Darken Nancy , Li Qingsheng , Whitney James B. , Alonso Maria J. , Plummer Francis A. , Luo Ma TITLE=Cervico-Vaginal Inflammatory Cytokine and Chemokine Responses to Two Different SIV Immunogens JOURNAL=Frontiers in Immunology VOLUME=11 YEAR=2020 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/immunology/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2020.01935 DOI=10.3389/fimmu.2020.01935 ISSN=1664-3224 ABSTRACT=
Studies have shown that vaccine vectors and route of immunization can differentially activate different arms of the immune system. However, the effects of different HIV vaccine immunogens on mucosal inflammation have not yet been studied. Because mucosal sites are the primary route of HIV infection, we evaluated the cervico-vaginal inflammatory cytokine and chemokine levels of Mauritian cynomolgus macaques following immunization and boost using two different SIV vaccine immunogens. The PCS vaccine delivers 12 20-amino acid peptides overlapping the 12 protease cleavage sites, and the Gag/Env vaccine delivers the full Gag and full Env proteins of simian immunodeficiency virus. We showed that the PCS vaccine prime and boosts induced short-lived, lower level increases of a few pro-inflammatory/chemotactic cytokines. In the PCS-vaccine group only the levels of MCP-1 were significantly increased above the baseline (