Elevated Numbers of HIV-Specific Poly-Functional CD8+ T Cells With Stem Cell-Like and Follicular Homing Phenotypes in HIV-Exposed Seronegative Individuals

Munusamy Ponnan, S and Thiruvengadam, K and Kathirvel, S and Shankar, J and Rajaraman, A and Mathaiyan, M and Dinesha, TR and Poongulali, S and Saravanan, S and Murugavel, KG and Swaminathan, S and Tripathy, SP and Neogi, U and Velu, V and Hanna, LE (2021) Elevated Numbers of HIV-Specific Poly-Functional CD8+ T Cells With Stem Cell-Like and Follicular Homing Phenotypes in HIV-Exposed Seronegative Individuals. In: Frontiers in Immunology, 12 .

Preview	PDF fro_imm_12_2021.pdf - Published Version Download (12MB) | Preview
	Archive (ZIP) 5338394.zip - Published Supplemental Material Download (11MB)

Abstract

HIV-specific CD8+ T cells are known to play a key role in viral control during acute and chronic HIV infection. Although many studies have demonstrated the importance of HIV-specific CD8+ T cells in viral control, its correlation with protection against HIV infection remains incompletely understood. To better understand the nature of the immune response that contributes to the early control of HIV infection, we analyzed the phenotype, distribution and function of anti-viral CD8+ T cells in a cohort of HIV-exposed seronegative (HESN) women, and compared them with healthy controls and HIV-infected individuals. Further, we evaluated the in vitro viral inhibition activity of CD8+ T cells against diverse HIV-1 strains. We found that the HESN group had significantly higher levels of CD8+ T cells that express T-stem cell-like (TSCM) and follicular homing (CXCR5+) phenotype with more effector like characteristics as compared to healthy controls. Further, we observed that the HESN population had a higher frequency of HIV-specific poly-functional CD8+ T cells with robust in vitro virus inhibiting capacity against different clades of HIV. Overall, our results demonstrate that the HESN population has elevated levels of HIV-specific poly-functional CD8+ T cells with robust virus inhibiting ability and express elevated levels of markers pertaining to TSCM and follicular homing phenotype. These results demonstrate that future vaccine and therapeutic strategies should focus on eliciting these critical CD8+ T cell subsets. © Copyright © 2021 Munusamy Ponnan, Thiruvengadam, Kathirvel, Shankar, Rajaraman, Mathaiyan, Dinesha, Poongulali, Saravanan, Murugavel, Swaminathan, Tripathy, Neogi, Velu and Hanna.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	Frontiers in Immunology
Publisher:	Frontiers Media S.A.
Additional Information:	The copyright for this article belongs to Authors
Department/Centre:	Division of Biological Sciences > Centre for Infectious Disease Research
Date Deposited:	19 Jul 2021 06:24
Last Modified:	19 Jul 2021 06:24
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/68720

Actions (login required)

View Item