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Infection and Immunity, May 2006, p. 2760-2766, Vol. 74, No. 5
0019-9567/06/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/IAI.74.5.2760-2766.2006
Copyright © 2006, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Laboratorio di Microbiologia Molecolare e Biotecnologia, Dipartimento di Biologia Molecolare, Università di Siena, 53100 Siena, Italy,1 Department of Developmental and Surgical Sciences, University of Minnesota School of Dentistry, Minneapolis, Minnesota2
Received 14 December 2005/ Returned for modification 30 January 2006/ Accepted 4 February 2006
The antigen-specific primary activation of CD4+ T cells was studied in vivo by adoptive transfer of ovalbumin-specific transgenic T cells (KJ1-26+ CD4+) following intranasal immunization with recombinant Streptococcus gordonii. A strain of S. gordonii expressing on its surface a model vaccine antigen fused to the ovalbumin (OVA) peptide from position 323 to 339 was constructed and used to study the OVA-specific T-cell activation in nasal mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue (NALT), lymph nodes, and spleens of mice immunized by the intranasal route. The recombinant strain, but not the wild type, activated the OVA-specific CD4+ T-cell population in the NALT (89% of KJ1-26+ CD4+ T cells) just 3 days following immunization. In the cervical lymph nodes and in the spleen, the percentage of proliferating cells was initially low, but it reached the peak of activation at day 5 (90%). This antigen-specific clonal expansion of KJ1-26+ CD4+ T cells after intranasal immunization was obtained with live and inactivated recombinant bacteria, and it indicates that the NALT is the site of antigen-specific T-cell priming.
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