Vaccination and timing influence SIV immune escape viral dynamics in vivo.

Abstract

CD8+ cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL) can be effective at controlling HIV-1 in humans and SIV in macaques, but their utility is partly offset by mutational escape. The kinetics of CTL escape and reversion of escape mutant viruses upon transmission to MHC-mismatched hosts can help us understand CTL-mediated viral control and the fitness cost extracted by immune escape mutation. Traditional methods for following CTL escape and reversion are, however, insensitive to minor viral quasispecies. We developed sensitive quantitative real-time PCR assays to track the viral load of SIV Gag164-172 KP9 wild-type (WT) and escape mutant (EM) variants in pigtail macaques. Rapid outgrowth of EM virus occurs dur..