SELECTIVE CD8-POSITIVE T CELL-INDUCING VACCINE ANTIGEN

摘要

A polypeptide for selectively inducing a target antigen-specific CD8-positive T cell response is provided. Induction of vaccine-derived human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-specific CD4-positive T cell response can promote HIV infection, so it would be useful to be able to obtain an HIV vaccine antigen that selectively induces an HIV-specific CD8-positive T cell response. In this invention, the amino acid sequence of a target antigen protein is divided into amino sequences of 8-12 residues, and a polypeptide antigen is designed in which these are linked in a sequence different from that of the original amino acid sequence. As a result of experiments on monkeys involving inoculation of vaccines using viral vectors and DNA expressing this antigen, it was shown that it is possible to efficiently and selectively induce an antigen-specific CD8-positive T cell response. This antigen is thought to be useful as a CD8-positive T cell-inducing vaccine antigen with extremely high selectivity.