Manipulation of the helper T cell response to influence antigenic competition occurring with a multivalent vaccine

By Brown, L. E. and Hunt, J. D. and Jackson, D. C. and Stewart, D. J. and Wood, P. R., Immunology and Cell Biology, 1996
Research Paper Web Link / URL:
Description
The reduction in antibody observed following inoculation with multiple heterologous Dichelobacter nodosus pill antigens is thought to be due to competition between antigen-specific B cells for a limited amount of T cell help. We demonstrate here that this competition is not further influenced by the expansion of cross-reactive antibody secreting cells at the expense of serogroup specific antibody secreting cells. The T cell determinants of pill recognized by sheep and BALB/c mice have been defined using 15 residue peptides. These T cell determinants include cross-reactive determinants in the conserved amino terminal region of the antigen. Here we investigate the effect of expanding the pill-specific T cell population by griming with pill derived T cell determinants. It was not possible to increase the antibody elicited in response to the multivalent vaccine by priming mice with either a synthetic peptide spanning a T cell determinant or with reduced and alkylated or heterologous serogroups of pili 4 weeks before inoculation with the multivalent vaccine. A strategy designed to increase the T cell population by inoculating animals with pill covalently coupled to an extrinsic T cell determinant was pursued.
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