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Infection and Immunity, May 2008, p. 2249-2255, Vol. 76, No. 5
0019-9567/08/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/IAI.00024-08
Copyright © 2008, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Division of Rheumatology, Immunology, and Allergy, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115,1 Laboratory of Mycobacterial Diseases and Cellular Immunology, FDA/CBER, Bethesda, Maryland 208922
Received 7 January 2008/ Returned for modification 23 February 2008/ Accepted 28 February 2008
The 10-kDa culture filtrate protein (CFP-10) and 6-kDa early secretory antigen of T cells (ESAT-6) are secreted in abundance by Mycobacterium tuberculosis and are frequently recognized by T cells from infected people. The genes encoding these proteins have been deleted from the genome of the vaccine strain Mycobacterium bovis bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG), and it is hypothesized that these proteins are important targets of protective immunity. Indeed, vaccination with ESAT-6 elicits protective CD4+ T cells in C57BL/6 mice. We have previously shown that M. tuberculosis infection of C3H mice elicits CFP-10-specific CD8+ and CD4+ T cells. Here we demonstrate that immunization with a CFP-10 DNA vaccine stimulates a specific T-cell response only to the H-2Kk-restricted epitope CFP-1032-39. These CFP-1032-39-specific CD8+ cells undergo a rapid expansion and accumulate in the lung following challenge of immunized mice with aerosolized M. tuberculosis. Protective immunity is induced by CFP-10 DNA vaccination as measured by a CFU reduction in the lung and spleen 4 and 8 weeks after challenge with M. tuberculosis. These data demonstrate that CFP-10 is a protective antigen and that CFP-1032-39-specific CD8+ T cells elicited by vaccination are sufficient to mediate protection against tuberculosis.
Published ahead of print on 10 March 2008.
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