Novel T cell driven approach leads to the identification of immunoprevalent antigens

Abstract

The prevention and treatment of infectious diseases is highly dependent on the availability of reliable diagnostic tests and protective or therapeutic vaccines. There also exists an urgent need to develop reliable biomarkers to monitor treatment success and to predict disease progression from asymptomatic to symptomatic disease in several infectious diseases. The elucidation of the disease-relevant antigens that elicit the protective immune responses is critical and required for the development of diagnostics and treatments. Here we present a novel “T cell driven approach” that permits the direct identification of pathogen epitopes and protein antigens capable of triggering specific T cell responses upon immunization in humans.