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Infection and Immunity, October 1998, p. 4696-4699, Vol. 66, No. 10
0019-9567/98/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1998, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.

Anthrax Toxin as a Molecular Tool for Stimulation of Cytotoxic T Lymphocytes: Disulfide-Linked Epitopes, Multiple Injections, and Role of CD4+ Cells

Jimmy D. Ballard,dagger R. John Collier, and Michael N. Starnbach*

Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts

Received 12 March 1998/Returned for modification 15 May 1998/Accepted 7 July 1998

We have previously demonstrated that anthrax toxin-derived proteins, protective antigen (PA) and the amino-terminal portion of lethal factor (LFn), can be used in combination to deliver heterologous molecules to the cytosol of mammalian cells. In this study we examined the ability of an LFn-peptide disulfide-linked heterodimer to prime cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL) in the presence of PA. A mutant of LFn that contains a carboxy-terminal reactive cysteine was generated. This form of LFn could be oxidized with a synthetic cysteine containing peptide to form a heterodimer of the protein and peptide. Mice injected with the heterodimer plus PA mounted a peptide-specific CTL response, indicating that this molecule functioned similarly to the genetically fused forms used previously. We also report the results of an analysis of two aspects of this system important for the development of experimental vaccines. First, CD4 knockout mice were unable to generate a CTL response when treated with PA plus an LFn-epitope fusion protein, suggesting that CD4+ helper responses are essential for stimulating specific CTL with the PA-LFn system. Second, we now show that primary injection with this system does not generate any detectable antibody response to the vaccine components and that prior immunization has no effect on priming a CTL response to an unrelated epitope upon subsequent injection.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Harvard Medical School, Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, 200 Longwood Ave., Boston, MA 02115. Phone: (617) 432-1873. Fax: (617) 738-7664. E-mail: starnbach{at}hms.harvard.edu.

dagger Present address: The University of Oklahoma, Department of Botany and Microbiology, GLCH 516, Norman, OK 73019.

Infection and Immunity, October 1998, p. 4696-4699, Vol. 66, No. 10
0019-9567/98/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1998, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.


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Copyright © 1998 by the American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.