SIV dendritic-cell vaccine

Dendritic-cells are essential for virus-specific cellular immunity. Inactivated whole virus-pulsed dendritic cell vaccines elicited functional virus-specific effector CD8⁺ T lymphocytes capable of eradicating HIV-infected cells in vitro, but the efficacy of such dendritic cell (DC) vaccines in vivo has been unclear. In the December 16 online Nature Medicine, Lu Wei and colleagues from Institut de Recherche sur les Vaccins et l'Immunothérapie des Cancers et du Sida, Paris, France, show that vaccination with chemically inactivated SIV-pulsed dendritic cells can elicit an effective and durable SIV-specific cellular and humoral immunity in SIV-infected rhesus monkeys (Nature, doi:10.1038/nm806, December 16, 2002).

Wei et al. examined the in vivo effect of an aldrithiol-2 (AT-2)-inactivated virus-pulsed DC vaccine using the SIV-infected rhesus monkey model. They observed that after three immunizations made at two-week intervals, the animals exhibited a 50-fold decrease of SIV DNA and a 1,000-fold decrease of SIV RNA in peripheral blood. These levels were ...