Robust, Vaccine-Induced CD8+ T Lymphocyte Response against an Out-of-Frame Epitope

Rational vaccines designed to engender T cell responses require intimate knowledge of how epitopes are generated and presented. Recently, we vaccinated 8 Mamu-A*02+ rhesus macaques with every SIV protein except Envelope (Env). Surprisingly, one of the strongest T cell responses engendered was against the Env protein, the Mamu-A*02–restricted epitope, Env788–795RY8. In this paper, we show that translation from an alternate reading frame of both the Rev-encoding DNA plasmid and the rAd5 vector engendered Env788–795RY8-specific CD8+ T cells of greater magnitude than “normal” SIV infection. Our data demonstrate both that the pathway from vaccination to immune response is not well understood and that products of alternate reading frames may be rich and untapped sources of T cell epitopes.