CD8(+) T Cell Immune Response in Immunocompetent Mice during Zika Virus Infection.

5 years ago

CD8(+) T Cell Immune Response in Immunocompetent Mice during Zika Virus Infection.

Liu H, Han X, Wang Q, Zhang F, Li S, Huang H, Gao GF, Tan S, Liu D, Hou B, Liu WJ, Zhang Y, Jia B, Bi Y

Zika virus (ZIKV) infection cause neurologic complications, including Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) in adults and central nerve system (CNS) abnormalities in fetuses. We investigated the immune response, especially CD8⁺ T cell response in C57BL/6 (B6) wild type (WT) mouse during ZIKV infection. We found that robust CD8⁺ T cell response was elicited, MHC-I restricted CD8⁺ T cell epitopes were identified and a tetramer that recognized ZIKV specific CD8⁺ T cells was developed. Finally, virus specific memory CD8⁺ T cells were generated in these mice. The CD8⁺ T cells from these infected mice were functional, as evidenced by that adoptive transfer of ZIKV specific CD8⁺ T cells could protect CNS against ZIKV infection and cross protective to Dengue virus (DENV) infection. Thus, our findings provided comprehensive insight into the immune responses against ZIKV and demonstrated that WT mouse could be a natural and easy access model for evaluating immune response to ZIKV infection.IMPORTANCE ZIKV infection cause severe clinical consequences, including Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) in adults, microcephaly, congenital malformations in fetuses and newborn infants, therefore, study of the immune response especially adaptive immune response to ZIKV infection is important to understand the disease caused by ZIKV infection. The importance of our finding is that we characterized the CD8⁺ T cell immune response to ZIKV in a comprehensive manner, and identified ZIKV epitopes. Using the identified immunodominant epitope, we developed a tetramer that could recognize ZIKV specific CD8⁺ T cells in vivo, which simplified detection and evaluation of ZIKV specific immune responses. In addition, the finding that a tetramer positive memory CD8⁺ T cell responses were generated and that CD8⁺ T cells could traffic to ZIKV infected brain greatly enhanced our understanding of ZIKV infection and will provide important insight for ZIKV vaccines design.

Publisher URL: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28835502

DOI: PubMed:28835502