Immune subdominant antigens as vaccine candidates against Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

ABSTRACT: Unlike most pathogens, many of the immunodominant epitopes from Mycobacterium tuberculosis are under purifying selection. This startling finding suggests that M. tuberculosis may gain an evolutionary advantage by focusing the human immune response against selected proteins. Although the implications of this to vaccine development are incompletely understood, it has been suggested that inducing strong Th1 responses against Ags that are only weakly recognized during natural infection may circumvent this evasion strategy and increase vaccine efficacy. To test the hypothesis that subdominant and/or weak M. tuberculosis Ags are viable vaccine candidates and to avoid complications because of differential immunodominance hierarchies in humans and experimental animals, we defined the immunodominan

SUBMITTER: Orr MT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4157111 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature