Comprehensive Screening of Mouse T‐Cell Epitopes in Human Herpesvirus 6B Glycoprotein H/L/Q1/Q2 Tetramer Complex

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Human herpesvirus 6 (HHV‐6) infects over 90% of people. The HHV‐6 subtype, HHV‐6B in particular, is often associated with exanthem subitum in early childhood. Exanthem subitum is usually self‐limiting and good prognosis disease; however, some infants primarily infected with HHV‐6B develop encephalitis/encephalopathy, and half of the patients developed encephalopathy reported to have neurological sequelae. Furthermore, after primary infection, HHV‐6B remains in a latent state and sometimes reactivated in immunosuppressed patients, causing life‐threatening severe encephalopathy. However, effective immunotherapies or vaccines for controlling HHV‐6B infection and reactivation have not yet been established. Recently, we have found that the HHV‐6B tetrameric glycoprotein (g) complex, gH/gL/gQ1/gQ2 is a promising vaccine candidate, and currently under preclinical development. To confirm our vaccine candidate protein complex induce detectable T‐cell responses, in this study, we comprehensively screened CD4 + and CD8 + T‐cell epitopes in the gH/gL/gQ1/gQ2 tetrameric complex protein in mice immunisation model. Both BALB/c and C57BL/6 mice were immunised with the tetrameric complex protein or plasmid DNA encoding gH, gL, gQ1, and gQ2, and then restimulated with 162 20‐mer peptides covering the whole gH/gL/gQ1/gQ2 sequences; multiple CD4 + and CD8 + T‐cell‐stimulating peptides were identified in both BALB/c and C57BL/6 mice. Our study demonstrates that gH/gL/gQ1/gQ2 tetramer‐targeted vaccination has potential to induce T‐cell responses in two different strains of mice and supports the future development and application of T‐cell‐inducing vaccine and immunotherapies against HHV‐6B.