Vaccine responses to conserved regions of the HIV-1 proteome are associated with an increased capacity to inhibit multiple virus isolates ex vivo

Background The majority of assays currently used to assess HIV-1 vaccine candidate immunogenicity in humans fail to predict protection against HIV-1 acquisition or control of viraemia. However, a correlation between in vivo and ex vivo control mediated by CD8+ T-cell populations has been described using an ex vivo virus inhibition assay (VIA) in chronically infected individuals and vaccinated non-human primates. Here we attempt to relate the specificity of vaccine-induced virus-specific CD8 responses to the inhibition of HIV-1 ex vivo. Methods